Dawn Love
Soc. 385
Zopf
Blog – 7
The Presentation of Self And
The Breaching Experiment
Goffman’s fundamental principle of the presentation of self is based on the imagery of the theatre, to portray the importance of human social face to face interactions (Goffman). After reading Goffman’s Presentation of Self, I decided to work on a breaching experiment that included me, and my best friend Renee. We decided that we would employ our experiment in a super-market were she could observe the reactions from two carefully selected individuals (in order to insure control of others, and for safety purposes as well).
The Plan was for me to shop directly from other people’s carts, one as a middle class educated woman, and one as a dressed down individual with-out all the mannerisms I displayed in the first, and observe the reactions from the people with whom I broke social norms. And after revealing my-self noting the embarrassment level in which the participant’s seem to be feeling. In this blog I use two theories of Goffman’s; presentation of self and dramaturgical analysis.
I dressed the part wearing a Silk top, dress pants, make-up, and jewelry in order to portray my-self as someone of a certain social status. I started a conversation with this older woman; I began to feed her “misinformation” (speech pattern, soft voice, intelligent manner). In attempting to control and guide the conversation to I choose one item from her cart and began to ask questions such as: where did you see this, and oh I always heard these were great, of course while attempting to lint, and control the situation. As the conversation came to an end she said it was a pleasure to meet such a nice person, and she turned to retrieve something else from the cooler. I then leaned over and took the item from her cart and walked away. As Renee surveyed her reaction from a frontal view, I relied on my senses to infer what was happening. First, I heard a gasp of sorts, and by the rustling of her cart, I knew she was coming to retrieve her item. While it was evident she was at that point trying to suppress her feelings, when she caught up to me the look on her face was that of confusion,
annoyance, and concern at the same time. It was interesting to find that as I explained why I had done this, she seemed more annoyed that I had wasted her time instead of finding any humor in it, but seemed more annoyed by the situation because I embarrassed her in a public place, which was of course not
my intent.
Our next unsuspecting participant was a middle age white male, I began to employ the same plan, but now dressed down and adapted a more street like persona while attempting this conversation. I was wearing some old sweats and an old tattered t-shirt and mess up hair. While attempting to guide and control his responses to me by limiting my questions, and his response time to my questions, just as in the first. I struck up a brief conversation about an item in his cart; the conversation was nowhere near as polite as the first. He basically avoided conversation with me, and I’m quite certain it was due impart to my change in social status, but after several attempts he finally, but hesitantly accepted my invitation to interact on a social level. The conversation was brief so I had to work fast; as I retrieved the item from his cart he looked up at me before I even had a chance to walk away. He started laughing so hard it made me laugh, I told him who I was, and why I had done it. He stated and I quote “no-one I’ve ever meet in my life would have enough balls to do something like that unless it was a joke. I asked him if my stunt embarrassed him in any way, he said; not in the least, and again of course this was not my intention, and he actually stated that it was the best laugh I’ve had in a month (Mine too). In this scenario I of course was unable to actually control the situation, I got caught.
Soc. 385
Zopf
Blog – 7
The Presentation of Self And
The Breaching Experiment
Goffman’s fundamental principle of the presentation of self is based on the imagery of the theatre, to portray the importance of human social face to face interactions (Goffman). After reading Goffman’s Presentation of Self, I decided to work on a breaching experiment that included me, and my best friend Renee. We decided that we would employ our experiment in a super-market were she could observe the reactions from two carefully selected individuals (in order to insure control of others, and for safety purposes as well).
The Plan was for me to shop directly from other people’s carts, one as a middle class educated woman, and one as a dressed down individual with-out all the mannerisms I displayed in the first, and observe the reactions from the people with whom I broke social norms. And after revealing my-self noting the embarrassment level in which the participant’s seem to be feeling. In this blog I use two theories of Goffman’s; presentation of self and dramaturgical analysis.
I dressed the part wearing a Silk top, dress pants, make-up, and jewelry in order to portray my-self as someone of a certain social status. I started a conversation with this older woman; I began to feed her “misinformation” (speech pattern, soft voice, intelligent manner). In attempting to control and guide the conversation to I choose one item from her cart and began to ask questions such as: where did you see this, and oh I always heard these were great, of course while attempting to lint, and control the situation. As the conversation came to an end she said it was a pleasure to meet such a nice person, and she turned to retrieve something else from the cooler. I then leaned over and took the item from her cart and walked away. As Renee surveyed her reaction from a frontal view, I relied on my senses to infer what was happening. First, I heard a gasp of sorts, and by the rustling of her cart, I knew she was coming to retrieve her item. While it was evident she was at that point trying to suppress her feelings, when she caught up to me the look on her face was that of confusion,
annoyance, and concern at the same time. It was interesting to find that as I explained why I had done this, she seemed more annoyed that I had wasted her time instead of finding any humor in it, but seemed more annoyed by the situation because I embarrassed her in a public place, which was of course not
my intent.
Our next unsuspecting participant was a middle age white male, I began to employ the same plan, but now dressed down and adapted a more street like persona while attempting this conversation. I was wearing some old sweats and an old tattered t-shirt and mess up hair. While attempting to guide and control his responses to me by limiting my questions, and his response time to my questions, just as in the first. I struck up a brief conversation about an item in his cart; the conversation was nowhere near as polite as the first. He basically avoided conversation with me, and I’m quite certain it was due impart to my change in social status, but after several attempts he finally, but hesitantly accepted my invitation to interact on a social level. The conversation was brief so I had to work fast; as I retrieved the item from his cart he looked up at me before I even had a chance to walk away. He started laughing so hard it made me laugh, I told him who I was, and why I had done it. He stated and I quote “no-one I’ve ever meet in my life would have enough balls to do something like that unless it was a joke. I asked him if my stunt embarrassed him in any way, he said; not in the least, and again of course this was not my intention, and he actually stated that it was the best laugh I’ve had in a month (Mine too). In this scenario I of course was unable to actually control the situation, I got caught.