Dramaturgical Analysis By Traving Goffman
Dramaturgical Analysis
Erving Goffman studied how people socially interacted with each other, and he introduced dramaturgical analysis, which is a study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. (1959, p.162) As Goffman mentions, we are an actor performing in a play. He introduced certain ideas, some of which I am going to use to my observations that I did at the enrollment center. The ideas that I am going to use are: presentation of self, embarrassment, and front region and back region. At first, I’m going to talk about Goffman’s concept of presentation of self, which is “a person’s efforts to create specific impressions in the minds of others.”. (Goffman, 1959, 1967, p. 163) We all want people think that our personality is a certain way, and we try do something differently depending on our ‘audience’, because we all want to impress others People work really hard and confidently so we can …show more content…
This is the idea of embarrassment, or “losing face” in Goffman’s words. (1967, p. 166) “Losing face” occurs when a person’s performance fails. We try to do something, but doesn’t work out the way it supposed to, or everything goes wrong, and that’s when we face embarrassment or losing face. When a teacher asks a question, and a student confidently says the answer, and that answer is not right, the student faces embarrassment. In my observation, the student who claimed that we still took out money from her account even though she was getting financial aid, and was registered for the right payment. Later on she found out that she signed up for installment payment plan instead of the financial aid payment plan, when one of the student employee, Jorell went there to help her. She was embarrassed because she was so sure that she is right and we made mistake, but that turned out to be
Erving Goffman studied how people socially interacted with each other, and he introduced dramaturgical analysis, which is a study of social interaction in terms of theatrical performance. (1959, p.162) As Goffman mentions, we are an actor performing in a play. He introduced certain ideas, some of which I am going to use to my observations that I did at the enrollment center. The ideas that I am going to use are: presentation of self, embarrassment, and front region and back region. At first, I’m going to talk about Goffman’s concept of presentation of self, which is “a person’s efforts to create specific impressions in the minds of others.”. (Goffman, 1959, 1967, p. 163) We all want people think that our personality is a certain way, and we try do something differently depending on our ‘audience’, because we all want to impress others People work really hard and confidently so we can …show more content…
This is the idea of embarrassment, or “losing face” in Goffman’s words. (1967, p. 166) “Losing face” occurs when a person’s performance fails. We try to do something, but doesn’t work out the way it supposed to, or everything goes wrong, and that’s when we face embarrassment or losing face. When a teacher asks a question, and a student confidently says the answer, and that answer is not right, the student faces embarrassment. In my observation, the student who claimed that we still took out money from her account even though she was getting financial aid, and was registered for the right payment. Later on she found out that she signed up for installment payment plan instead of the financial aid payment plan, when one of the student employee, Jorell went there to help her. She was embarrassed because she was so sure that she is right and we made mistake, but that turned out to be