Interactional Sociolinguistics

Assignments

            Reading Critique 1

Erving Goffman: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is published in 1959. He uses “dramaturgical approach” which provides new insight into the nature of social interaction and the psychology of an individual.

Interaction is described as a “performance” affected by environment and audience and is constructed to provide others with “impression” coincident with performers’ aims. To establish social identity, the process becomes closely associated with “front”, which is the expressive equipment employed by one in his performance. “Front” can be divided into setting, appearance and manner. There are two other components which are needed in constructing a front--- team and region.

Performance has relationship with “team”. Team is a group of people share the same goal and cooperate with team members in performance. “Region” (division between team performance and audience) is setting for people to perform. Front stage is where performers perform their roles. Back stage is the place they prepare and out stage is where they end one role but preparing for another one.

Stigma changes the nature of impression management. According to stigma nature of people, one will be described as “discredited” or “discreditable” by small deviance. Based on verbal and nonverbal symbol and lines, one’s identity is constructed through an understanding of one self to others in the way of reflection of faces.

We use Goffman’s theories in daily lives but we do them unintentionally. We perform different roles everyday: like in university, we play as a student; at home, we act as good children. In order to perform our roles successfully, we need to modify our lines time to time and try to behave normal if it is possible. Take being a child of our parents as example, obey and respect them are “normal” for them. However, it is quite difficult to define what is normal and what is not.

In addition, we often work in “team”, no matter in university or at home, since we share the same aims while we cooperate. We must learn how to work well with our team members to not lose one’s face.

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