Explain Goffman’s dramaturgical approach to the study of social life. Be sure to define all key vocabulary employed by Goffman. Connect this approach to the contemporary world embodied by mediated expressions of the self [e.g. text messaging, Facebook, etc.]. How do these new technologies confirm or alter Goffman’s approach?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Goffman analyzed interaction through analogy with the theater. Goffman claiming that “life itself is a dramatically enacted thing” (1959:72), turned his attention to the symbolic dimensions of social encounters in his effort to explore the nature of the self and its relation to the broader moral code that shapes interaction performances. Goffman introduced a vocabulary normally associated with the world of the theater: front, backstage, setting, audience, performance, and perhaps most provocatively, performer and character, are all part of his repertoire of terms used to examine the often unspoken and taken-for-granted subtleties that structure the interaction order. Goffman’s notion of the front, which he labels as that part of the individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance. Goffman divides the front into two parts: the setting and the personal front. The front is contrasted with the backstage, the region of the performance normally unobserved by, and restricted from, members of the audience. Goffman draws a distinction between the self as performer and as character. The character is found in the whole scene of his action; whereas the performer is a fabricator of impressions. Students should then provide examples from their own use of social media (online profiles), networked virtual environments (avatars), and mobile connectivity to either confirm Goffman’s theories or problematize them.