Essay: Evring Manual Goffman

Evring Manual Goffman was born on June 11, 1922 in Canada and died on November, 19 in Philadelphia of stomach cancer. He was the son of Max and Anne Goffman and the brother of Frances. He studied as an undergraduate in sociology at the University of Toronto and completed his graduate work at the University of Chicago, obtaining, in 1945, M.A. and, four years later, Ph.D. In 1949, Goffman wrote his first book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, as a result to his beliefs that all participants in face-to-face interactions are very close to thetrical performance. He used the framework of “dramaturgy” to portray people as actors.
‘When an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them. They are asked to believe that the character they see actually possesses the attributes he appears to possess, that the task he performs will have the consequences that are implicitly claimed for it, and that, in general, matters are what they appear to be. In line with this, there is the popular view that the individual offers his performance and puts on his show ‘ for the benefit of other people.’ It will be convenient to begin a consideration of performances by turning the question around and looking at the individual’s own belief in the impression of reality that he attempts to engender in those among whom he finds himself.
At one extreme, we find that the performer can be fully taken in by his own act ; he can be sincerely convinced that the impression of reality which he stages is the real reality. When his audience is also convinced in this way about the show he puts on ‘and this seems to be the typical case ‘then for the moment, anyway, only the sociologist or the socially disgruntled will have any doubts about the ‘ realness ‘ of what is presented.
At the other extreme, we find that the performer may not be taken in at all by his own routine. This possibility is understandable, since no one is in quite as good an observational position to see through the act as the person who puts it on. Coupled with this, the performer may be moved to .guide the conviction of his audience only as a means to other ends, having no ultimate concern in the conception that they have of him or of the situation. When the individual has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term sincere for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance. It should be understood that the cynic, with all his professional disinvolvement, may obtain unprofessional pleasures from his masquerade, experiencing a kind of gleeful spiritual aggression from the fact that he can toy at will with something his audience must take seriously.’
In “The presentation of self in everyday life”, Goffman reveals the fact that our world, as we know it, in which we live every day of our lives, is nothing but a stage. As Goffman believe, in every interaction that takes place, information about the individuals involved is both presented and absorbed. Obviously, every stage has its performers with certain roles to act, observers (audience) and critics. Life can be seen as a spectacle full of different roles. An ‘actor’,a ‘caracter’ or a ‘mask’, as Goffman considers, plays, on the life’s stage, a wide variety of roles from the begining till the end of its life. According to Ritzer (2007): ‘Goffman focused on dramaturgy or a view of social life as a series of dramatic performances akin to those performated in the theatre’ (p. 137). On the stage, no actor can play a full role alone. He must interract, in social way, with others. This social interaction has some written and unwritten rules. As a social actor, you have some certain and fixed roles, such as the role of mother, daugher, sister, female etc., and a plenty of other roles that you can choose to act, such as the role of teacher, doctor, star. This system has been part of our human society from the begining of the world. In contrary, Giddens (2009) considers that ‘ Goffman is not suggesting that the social world really is a stage, but that using the dramaturgical analogy we can study certain aspect of it and learn more about why people behave in the ways they do’ (p. 268).