Goffman talks about how our faces give an emotion in which people use this expression to how we are as a person and the way in which we are behaving. This is what Goffman talks about where faces are an importance facet to interactions. We use these faces to keep up an appearance within our social spheres, and the way we have used these sorts of faces, we use these faces assigned to ourselves and sort of “manage” these faces throughout. He talks about how the interactions we have with other people are dramaturgical in a way that we put on a show or an act within everyday occurrences in our lives to avoid certain embarrassments from our immediate, everyday lives. We are using these different faces that we put on to “fit in” within our culture and social spheres. We create these faces early on throughout interactions and put them on in our social settings.
Our flash mob we did as a class was successful in a sense that we put on different faces that we are normal to and went outside our normal selves. When we were doing the bird calls we stepped out of our box and participated in something strange to our everyday lives. This embarrassment did not only occur within us, the ones participating but also a sort of embarrassment in the surrounding people. I would honestly say that it was much easier doing it within the class and if I were to do that individually I would not have been able to participate because it would have been too embarrassing. There were different reactions to the group of people around me to the bird calls. One group was actually trying to study and eventually got up to leave because of the noise that was being made, which I sort of felt bad about but it was an interesting reaction. When the calls started getting frequent there was a humorous side to what we were doing and people eventually accepted it and thought that it was amusing to hear these odd noises. Some were disturbed by the occurrences and did not know how to react to the racket that was being made. I myself was severely embarrassed though throughout the calls because it was stepping out of my normal face and was foreign territory to me. Even though I am a pretty goofy individual within my social sphere, acting that way among complete strangers was difficult because they did not actually know me as a person and I was feeling like these certain people were judging me as a nuisance and different. I will honestly say that I did not do the call as loud as I could have because of the shear fact that it was different. Others may not have done a call because they were too embarrassed and that they would not be accepted. I realized that after the experiment that I would not know any of the people around me after that interaction and that it was silly to be so shy about it because I really should not worry about how people think of me because I am who I am. I do not believe this was a full-fledged flash mob because we were not identified as a group and merely individuals who were making noises. The dramaturgical experiences and performances that Goffman speaks of were seen because the embarrassment that we were forced to was broken due to the participation. Goffman talks about the importance of the face in interactions. Faces give of emotions that people use o interpret how a person is behaving or what type of person they are. Goffman talks about how individuals have to maintain a certain type of face in order to keep up an appearance. Once a person is assigned or assigns a face to themselves, they must live up to it. Goffman also talked about how interactions between individuals are dramaturgical. In other words people put on a certain act in everyday life in order to avoid embarrassment. From day to day, individuals act a certain way or wear a certain face in order to try and fit within the cultural norms and expectations.
In the flash mob that our class participated in, many people stepped outside of the norms and did something that could be considered embarrassing. People do not usually do bird calls within an average day. By having a large group of people doing bird calls, it created a type of embarrassment for not only those doing the bird calls, but also for those within the area of where the flash mob was occurring. Having a large group also made it a situation where it was not as embarrassing as it could be if someone were to just go and do bird calls by himself or herself. Within our class there was a subset of norms that were acceptable at the time, so in that way it was easier to save face because we had other people doing it in accordance. Many people outside of the experience did not react to the bird calls although it was completely out of the ordinary because they might have felt like it was too embarrassing to even acknowledge that something odd was occurring. Around where I sat, some people reacted angrily by trying to shush us and another person yelled for us to “grow up”. Once the bird calls became more apparent to those around us, some people also laughed at it. When participating in the flash mob, although it was a fun activity, it was embarrassing, especially for some people. When doing the bird calls I did not really want anyone to see me doing it, despite the fact that because I am a silly person, this could be something that is not so surprising. But within the social context of the situation, regardless of my “face”, it was not a socially acceptable behavior. I also noticed that within our class some people only did a bird call once or twice, or quietly did it to avoid any embarrassment. Fully participating in the flashmob might have been something that would cause them to lose face, so they did not really want to do it. Despite this, our team members did well in employing dramaturgical loyalty, discipline, and circumspection. Many people continued to bird calls in order to keep the performance going. Some people had a little more difficulty with discipline because it was hard not to laugh at what we were doing. And we minimized risk by choosing the inner circle as our flash mob setting because it was a place in which no one could really complain about noise because the area was already noisy and we also did not go on with the bird calls too long so that people really did eventually get seriously disturbed by it. Not fully participating also was a way to avoid being labeled as weird or odd. Another aspect of the social mob that was important to how embarrassed someone got was due to the surroundings in which we were, that is, we were surrounded by peers. The bird calls could have been even more embarrassing is a professor passed by and saw a student of theirs participating, they might think of them differently. This creates a problem for the type of face the student was portraying when they were with their professor. Although this experiment may have not technically been a flash mob because it was not explicitly apparent that we were a group, it was something that involved behavior that would be considered embarrassing. Doing this flash mob separated us from the dramaturgical performances that we usually do to avoid embarrassment thus forcing us into an interesting social situation. On a daily basis, people look for visual clues to coordinate behavior with others. We look at a person’s dress and comportment to assess gender. We look at the quality of their clothes coupled with their use of language to estimate social class and level of education. These are just a few of the ways that we use our perception of an individual to determine how best to interact with them. The signs that we observe of others are founded in a “working consensus” about what each sign means. Goffman offers that these “signs” can often be contrived by the individual to present a certain image of the self to illicit a desired response.
He states that “observers can glean clues from his[the individual] conduct and appearance which allow them to apply their previous experience with individuals roughly similar to the one before them or, more important, to apply untested stereotypes to him”(1). Goffman presents that the individual has two ways in which he expresses these “signs,” “the expression that he gives, and the expression that he gives off”(2). The first of which is intended to present a particular image with a meaning that is easily identifiable by the average person. The second way of expressing signs includes behavior that is representative of the individual but has some covert intention. Based on the interaction between the individual and the other, the one with the most astute assessment of the other’s “signs” carries an advantage over the situation. “Regardless of the particular objective which the individual has in mind and of his motive for having this objective, it will be in his interests to control the conduct of the others, especially their responsive treatment of him”(3). This clip of a British variety show, Lil Miss Jocelyn, depicts the character Fiona having dinner at her manager’s home. She is dressed in a way that is quite generic and she has chemically relaxed hair. Her speech is very particular, free from slang and without accent (aside from the obvious British accent). Her humor is culture-free without any reference to any racial or ethnic groups. This “presentation of self” that she has created is in opposition to the responses that can be associated with speaking slang, natural hair, cultural or racial references in conversations or jokes. In an effort to control the ways in which her co-workers interact with her, she has created “signs” that distance her from certain stereotypes and negative responses. What is most interesting about this “presentation” of Fiona is that it is always being threatened by the introduction of “individuals roughly similar” to her. Also important to acknowledge is that she has adopted this “front stage behavior” that is so fragile that any hint of the signs indicative of the undesired responses would lead to the emergence of her “backstage behavior.” It is obvious to me that this scenario intends to highlight the many ways in which blackness has been stigmatized. But also it is significant to note how some black people have created a public self that is devoid of the traits that are associated with blackness in their particular geographic location. In this case, England has a large number of Nigerians and West Indians, so Fiona attempts to distance herself from black British-ness by rejecting certain culinary dishes as well as specific cultural questions. As pointed out in the clip, to the blacks that Fiona encountered, she was absolutely black. However, Fiona’s manager really didn’t “know” that she was black. She was quite insistent throughout the interaction that “no one, absolutely no one knows that I’m black.” Her ability to accurately know which qualities were relevant and altering those qualities allowed Fiona to, at times, successfully “present” herself in a very particular way. Additionally, her co-workers were willing to accept these “signs” which added some validity to her presentation. Even though she was able to convince others to not see her in a racialized way, the fragility of her "front stage" identity was humorously evident. According to Goffman, micro-sociology is a phenomenon that focuses on people and interpersonal interactions. Micro-sociologists focus on face-to-face to interactions, accentuate meanings, and stress the importance of their everyday lived experiences. For example, I would consider our flashmob that we did today to be an example of sociology because we were physically in the Inner Circle having face-to-face contact with our peers. I can honestly say that I had fun while doing the experiment. I was a little embarrassed at first, but once others started to join in I started to feel more comfortable; I think this was because I had more people to relate to in that other people were joining in and I did not feel alone. I was completely blown away when some of the people in there with us decided to actually join in on the chaos. There was one person that I can remember explicitly because of how obvious he was making it seem that it was him cawing. He would hear someone from the class start cawing and then he would get up on his chair in the corner, perch like a bird, and caw like a pterodactyl. However, most of the other people that were around us either ignored what we were doing, started laughing, or were looking around to see where the noise was coming from. There was a table that was sitting behind and three other people, one of the guys at the table asked his female counterpart if he join in and she said no because what we were doing was annoying. However, I do not think she knew exactly who was doing it was because we were doing very discretely. It seemed as if some of the people ignored what we were doing because we were not threatening their immediate safety or causing harm to anybody. I can honestly say that in this experiment we went completely against the norms of what the atmosphere in the Inner Circle was supposed to be like. It is normally a place for someone to grab a bite to eat or chat with friends. All in all, I think our experiment was successful to some extent. That is in the fact that we disrupted the normal flow of what the Inner Circle is supposed to be like. However, it did need to be choreographed a little bit more because towards the end we were all supposed to caw at the same time to show our onlookers that we were a part of a larger group and not just randomly doing it to be annoying. Do you think that we would have made a larger impact on our onlookers if we were to have choreographed something at the end? Would it have been more successful if we had assigned a time slot to a group of people to caw at the same time?
Goffman also brings up the notion of phenomenology. This is a concept that accentuates the close observations of an individual’s experience and the ways in which basic categories are formed. This relates back to the idea of saying that something is socially constructed. For example, this could be the social construction of gender or the social construction of race and the list goes on. In my other Sociology class from last year, Professor Garcia had mentioned in class that we as a collective society need to categorize the things around us in order to make sense out of them. If it were not for these constructions, our world would be hectic because we would not know where to place someone and helps us to create meaning out of our social world. Do you think that society would be chaotic if we did not categorize people, or, would it make issues like racism and oppression diminish? Although most won’t believe it, we are all actors. Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgical Analysis is the sociological view that explores social interaction as an improvisational theater in which impression management is the main performance. According to Goffman the goal of all interaction is communication. Interaction can be broken down into three areas: role, script, and lines. A role is the image we wish to convey, script refers to communication, and finally lines are the pattern of communication that expresses our view on a given situation.
In his analysis, Goffman talks of a front stage and a back stage. The front stage is where we put on a performance; this is where we perform roles and behave in a particular way for a particular audience. Society then can be viewed as a theater in this sense. Take the example of a student and a professor. A professor wishes to express themselves in a professional manner and in order to do so is not going to talk to their students like they would a family member or friend. The same applies for a student; they are not going to talk to their professor about what they did over the weekend rather they will discuss upcoming assignments, presentations, and classes. Our backstage then is where we are our “true selves.” We hide our backstage behavior; it is in our backstage that we are able to step out of character. We can rehearse our performances and relive pervious performances that we have given in the front stage. I am very aware of my front stage and am not one to embarrass myself or put myself in a situation where I know I would feel uncomfortable but that’s exactly what was asked of me for class today. I stepped out of my comfort zone Thursday morning with the flashmob that was performed at Inner Circle in SCE. My stomach dropped and I started to blush even though I was not the one that started the bird calling for our flashmob. I was very aware of the reactions of other UIC students during our flashmob. While most seemed not to care, there were a few who looked up from what they were doing and looked around Inner Circle to see what was going. A few students laughed at what we were doing and I even heard one male student say “what the f***” which I found to be funny. I probably would have reacted the same way. I do not like to call extra attention to myself so I found our flashmob to be personally awkward, but I can say it is an experience I will never forget and will most likely not do again. I don’t know that our flashmob was completely successful; I do not think people realized that we were doing a flashmob because it really didn’t come off that way. Had I not been a part of it, I would have thought people were being unusually awkward and making bird calls for the fun of it. I think had we gotten up as a class at the end and danced around like birds or something of that nature it would have been more obvious to observers that we were attempting a flashmob. The flashmob was a good experiment that demonstrated Goffman’s Dramaturgical Analysis. I was able to judge myself as an actor in society and also make judgments about other actors. I found it interesting to relive my experience in my backstage and think about what I would have done different and how I would have reacted differently given the opportunity to do it over again. It was interesting to see the reaction of others and make assumptions based on their front stage behaviors which is the way they reacted to our childlike bird calling. We defined microsociology as the study of everyday life and interactions on a smaller level. This can include watching a classroom do their daily lessons, or watching a church do their Sunday mass. Goffman was considered a micro sociologist since he was interested in why people act the way they do, and what drives social interaction. Today our class decided to construct a flash mob in order to disrupt the everyday interaction of the students and violate many social norms. I honestly didn’t know what to expect when the “cawing” first began and I was surprised by what I saw. Many students either ignored or found the noise humorous. Some looked confused and asked their peers what the noise was, one person even shouted “grow up” I spoke with my classmates about that statement and why it was made. We discussed that strange noises or immature behavior is usually associated with children, and when an adult breaks the norm of acting like such, it can bother or annoy certain people. We went against the norm of the typical social interactions taking place. Instead of talking quietly amongst ourselves at our tables, or eating, we imitated birds. This in turn, caused many people to lose face, and become confused or aggravated.
In class we spoke of Goffman’s “dramaturgical analysis” Such analysis states that we as individuals are actors, and our everyday life whether it be conversations or just actions in general are all based on improvisation. Goffman broke these “performances” down into two categories, front stage and back stage. Front stage refers to what we present ourselves to be, the person we want others to see us as. Such performances can be seen on a daily basis, for example our professors. They come to class and present themselves as our teachers, as a subject of superiority. We are given class rules and adhere to them because we want the teacher to like us and give us good grades. The professor puts on a performance every time he or she lectures the class about course matter. However, when our professor is at a bar or family event, they put on a different performance. They then become the sibling or the friend. They do not talk about grades or course work to their peers, that is a performance for the students. Our front stage roles are ever-changing and depend heavily on environment. I wouldn’t go up to my professor and tell him how drunk I got on the weekend before because I am playing the role of the student, this is something I would tell my friends. Instead I would ask about an upcoming assignment, or make small talk about scholarly activities. Back stage serves as a more hidden persona, and it refers to an individual’s personal behavior. Our back stage self is really only evident to us and the people that we choose to let in. This would more than likely be a close friend or family member, even a significant other. Goffman states that the goal of all interaction is communication, and most of our interaction is guess work. We make presumptions on how an individual feels about certain things based on an array of things such as body language or facial expressions. We are not actually told that someone hates pickles vocally, but we make that assumption based on the look of disgust. In class we broke interaction down to three areas, role, which is the image we which to convey, script, which refers to communication and lastly our lines which form a pattern. Social interaction is complex and is based on many aspects. I found Goffman’s analysis to be insightful and though provoking. We are all actors, and we depend on social cues and norms to lead our interaction. We all put on performances and become whoever we need to be to fill out roles whether it be student, mother, daughter, friend, or grandmother. We depend on these performances to lead our interaction. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
March 2014
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