Erving Goffman introduced the idea of dramaturgical analysis in his 1959 book "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life". He argued that everyday social interactions are like theatrical performances, with individuals presenting different versions of themselves depending on the audience. Specifically, people project a "front stage self" to unfamiliar others and a more genuine "back stage self" among close acquaintances. Goffman also discussed how people use "impression management techniques" to control how they are perceived by others.

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The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life
ERVING GOFFMAN

2. ERVING
GOFFMAN
1922-1982
Canadian-American Sociologist
Key figure in Symbolic Interactionism
DRAMATURGICAL PERSPECTIVE
Major Works:
“The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”
“Stigma:Notes the Management of Spoiled
Identity”

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DRAMATURGY-Everyday behaviour
as a theatrical performance!
• 1959-Erving Goffman introduced the idea of
dramaturgical analysis in his book “The Presentation
of Self in Everyday Life”
• This symbolic interactionist theory makes the analogy
of life as a theatrical performance and states that how
we present ourselves in everyday life is similar to a
stage performance

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Tenets
• All actions are social in nature
• All social actions are performances
• All performances are managed

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Shakespeare’s famous line

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• “all the world’s a stage.. and all the men and women
are merely players..they have their own exits and their
entrance.. and one man in his time plays many parts…”
• Goffman took these lines seriously in his dramaturgical
account of human interaction and he argued that we
display a series of masks to other enacting roles,
controlling in staging how we appear
• When we interact with individuals we are actors in a
performance

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• That performances are largely based on values, beliefs
and habits that we learn from social institutions and our
interaction with others
• In situations, where we don’t know the others in the
scene on an un-familiar interaction, we present our
FRONT STAGE SELF (F.S.S)
• This FSS is the version of us that we believe would be
favourable to others; when we engage with FSS, we
also engage in IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
TECHNIQUES (IMT)

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• In IMT, we engage in behaviour what we want the
world to see about us; which is often favourable (I am
a good person, I want to show people that I am a good
person; I am going to do this so they like me etc)
• BACK STAGE SELF: The version of self, that we often
present to those we are familiar with (“we accept you
group’)
• MYSTIFICATION: the social distance that should be
kept between the actor and the audience

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• The actor should conceal the past life which incompatible with the
current performance
• The errors that have been made in the preparations of the
performance should be concealed
• The process of producing something is concealed and on the end
product is shown
• The unfair practices in making the end product is concealed
• The actors have to compromise with standards
ALL THESE ARE CRUCIAL FOR SUCCESSFUL ROLE PERFORMANCE

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• We do this everyday (the front stage self, back stage
self, Impression management techniques)
• The more socially connected we are the more we tent
to management that type of a self we want to brought
to see favourably
• We do this a lot in social media when we do status
updates in FB and WhatsApp. (eg. I volunteered
today)

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“Reciprocal influence of individuals upon another’s
actions when in one another’s immediate physical
presence”
Goffman (1959)

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• According to Goffman, we juggle masks as per the
different social groups we are interacting with
• In his view, there NO TRUE SELF
• That is, no identifiable performer behind the roles
• The roles are just performances
• He also challenged the idea that each of us have more
or less a fixed character or psychological identity

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Performance Teams
• A performance team refers to “any set of individuals who
cooperate in staging a single routine” (Goffman, 1959)
• The routine staged is the activity associated with the social
establishment
• To perform successfully, a team must proceed through
different processes
• First they must establish PARTY LINE, maintain loyalty to the
teams performance, and sustain that “line” effectively during
the show; to carry out those tasks, participants must trust
partners

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• People cannot switch teams mid-performance (i.e., that
they betray one team to die with another during the show)
• To organise performances, teams try to control as much
of the performance setting as possible, with a person
serving as a “director” and some division of performative
labour allocated among different members during shows
• Directors and team members will assign “parts” and work
together to bring wayward performers back into line,
avoid disruptions and repair them as much as possible

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Criticism
• Gouldner: too much micro
• Psathas & Schegloff: too unsystematic; concepts are
assembled in a disorganised way
• Much later in his career, Goffman returned to the
questions of the lists of the dramaturgical metaphor; in
the preface to Frame Analysis (1974) he wrote- “all the
world is not a stage:we need real parking lots,
cloakrooms, insurance, and so on.

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Writing Activity
• Explain the approach that tried to understand the
social reality using theatrical analogy
• Explain the concept of “team” in dramaturgy
• Discuss the theory of dramaturgy.

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Reading Activity
• Read the book chapter “Workplaces as
Stages” (Check the link of reading activity in the LMS
portal)

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References
• (Key Sociologists) Greg Smith - Erving Goffman-
Routledge (2006)
• Wallace, Ruth A (1995) Contemporary Sociological
Theory: Continuing the Classical Tradition
• George Ritzer - Encyclopedia of social theory. Vol 1-
Sage Publications (2005).page 212-13
• Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
(1959)