Goffman Since the Research Materials

Goffman Since the research materials are provided to you by human beings, and may be based on numerous sources. And accurate before referencing the material. Sociologists look at the social world, the relationships that people have in their everyday lives. One of the better known sociologists is Erving Goffman was working at the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, when he began to emphasize ethnographic study and observation of people to see how they conform to their social environment and change behavior in different situations.

In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman uses the metaphor of a theater and actors to show how individuals "stage manage" when with others. He calls this "dramaturgy." A sociologist can study the character of social reality by observing how the actor perceives and interprets the social environment. Sometimes the sociologist is only watching what is being acted to gain insights into motives and meanings of human behavior. Other times, he/she is a part of the drama, yet objectively recording what is occurring.

Observing how individuals act with one another in various social environments, can offer additional information about larger social systems and institutions and many different areas of social life. Routine behavior in daily life becomes, with closer examination, a part of complicated and vital aspects of social relationships. By studying these interactions, one can better understand humans as social beings as well as their relationship between and among larger societies. Non-verbal communication can offer the observer considerable information. Goffman gave the example of proximity and eye contact.

When two strangers walk toward each other, they quickly establish eye contact to assess the possibility of danger. When the strangers are about eight feet apart, the eye contact changes to "civil inattention" (Goffman, 1963, p. 83) or lowering of the eyes. When walking down the street, I join all the other people in this "civil inattention." I quickly glance at other people, scan what they look like, and then, just as quickly, look away. The other person does the same. We let each other know there is no threat.

This action takes place everywhere with people in many different cultures. We are gathering information about other people and then, in an act of courtesy so not invade the other person's privacy, we look away. Goffman explains that civil inattention is a slight interpersonal rituals, but one that continually regulates the social relationship of people in society. At work, I can observe two people talking and know how they feel about each other through their face-to-face interaction.

Goffman defines "impression management," as how individuals try to manage the other person's impressions of them through the words they use, the level of their voice and unconscious body language. The non-verbal communication includes such things as proximity of the people, facial expressions and body positions such as crossed arms and legs. In dramaturgy, Goffman defines this interaction the "front stage" (1967) of daily life, where a face-to-face encounter ensures that the person acts in a way that is consistent with the role he/she wants to convey.

There are various props that might be considered in this interaction, such as gender, age, size, and appearance, as well as the verbal and non-verbal communication. These will show behavior, such as support, deference, submission, or authority. Goffman (1961), for instance, noticed that women professionals in hospital settings did not say as much in male-dominated situations as men did.

Goffman followed his concept of presentation of self in Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience, where social frames are how humans shape and classify their life experiences regarding objects and events around them (1974, pp. 11-13). These frames also explain how people see situations differently. For instance, two individuals might frame the same activity as volunteering or work. Without frames, society would consist of numerous unrelated interactions. No one would know how to relate to each other.

However, Goffman emphasizes that framing can be inhibited by the social organization, which takes the primary role with framing of experiences in everyday social situations. Experiences are organized by each person into frameworks, keys and keyings, and designs and fabrications. The meaning behind an event can be changed by the key from what it actually seems to be into something else. For example, a person might say something may be perceived as an objective statement or keyed as a pun or joke.

Recently, Deborah Tannen is observing how framing works in different settings, where people are not sure of the meaning behind the words. She gives the following example: woman asked another woman in her office if she would like to have lunch. The colleague said no, she was sorry, she had a report to finish. The woman repeated the invitation the next week. Again her colleague declined, saying she had not been feeling well. The first woman was confused.

So she asked her colleague what her refusals meant: Was she really just busy one week and ailing the next, or was she trying to say she simply didn't want to have lunch, so stop asking? The response only confused her more: "Well, um, sure, y' know, I really haven't been feeling well and last week really was difficult with that report which, by the way, was about a very interesting case. It was...." The woman was frustrated. She couldn't understand why her colleague didn't just say what she meant.

But the other woman was frustrated too. She couldn't understand why she was being pushed to say no directly, when she had made perfectly clear that she was not interested in pursuing a friendship. One woman was expecting directness; to her, indirectness is dishonest. The other was expecting her indirectness to be understood;.