Presentation fo Self with Goffman

It's time for the week 6 summary posting thingy! Yay! So yeah, heres a really lazy phlegm-addled summary of 'Performances' from Goffmans The Presentation of Self in Everyday life. Enjoy, or skip over entirely because its dreadfully dull. Your choice :)

Goffman believes that presentation of self can be seen as a form of dramatic performance. Depending on the context, we play different ‘roles’ in order to convey our self as possessing particular characteristics. The performer may or may not believe they possess the characteristics of the role they are playing (those who don’t Goffman calls cynics), however it is important that the audience believes the performance for both their own benefit and the benefit of the performer.

The part of performance that is somewhat fixed and stable and acts to define the situation Goffman labels as the ‘Front’. This consists of the setting and the personal front. The Setting consists of the space the performance takes place in, the props used, and general background objects. The performance cannot start until the performer is in this space, and generally ends once they leave it (although on some occasions the setting follows the performers, such as in a funeral procession.) The Personal Front consists of items identified with the performer themselves, and follow them regardless of setting. Some of these items are fixed (age, sex, ethnicity), and some are mobile (fashion choice, status, facial expression, etc.).

Personal Front can be divided into Appearance and Manner (similar to Demeanor and Deference), and the audience will expect there to be some consistency between these two aspects of the Personal Front, and in order to successfully maintain the image portrayed the performer must be careful not to damage these expectations of consistency. Although there are infinite combinations of performers, audience, settings and roles, there are not infinite variations of ‘front’; rather, there is a multitude of pre-established fronts that the performer can knowingly or unknowingly choose from. This makes the task of the audience (correctly interpreting the role) far easier as, instead of having to individually interpret each new performance as a new role, and subconsciously determine how to respond to these roles, they can rely on pre-established broad categories and, using past experiences, fit the role performed into on of these.