The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life

“For the purpose of this report, interaction (that is, face-to-face interaction) may be roughly defined as the reciprocal influence of individuals upon one another’s actions when in one another’s immediate physical presence. […] A ‘performance’ may be defined as all the activity of a given participant on a given occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other participants. […] The pre-established pattern of action which is unfolded during a performance and which may be presented or played through on other occasions may be called a ‘part’ or ‘routine.’ These situational terms can easily be related to conventional structural ones. […] Defining social role as the enactment of rights and duties attached to a given status, we can say that a social role will involve one or more parts and that each of these different parts may be presented by the performer on a series of occasions to the same kinds of audiences or to an audience of the same persons.” 

Goffman outlines the three key categories that guide his analysis: interaction, performance, and part/routine. Taken together, these elements constitute the substance of all social (face-to-face) interactions. According to Goffman, interactions are always intersubjective and thus refer to situations where more than one individual is present. Moreover, the individuals involved in such situations mutually influence one another’s behavior, whether through actions or nonverbal expressions. Regarding performances, Goffman refers to how individuals act out certain social positions with respect to the functions and merits accorded to that role (e.g., a manager conducts themselves so they appear knowledgeable about the workings of the entire business, thus appearing as deserving of their position of authority to the workers). “Part” or “routine” mean the procedural actions attributed to a given performer due to their social position. In this way, we begin to understand why each role has a specific set of expectations and value, and how observers come to interpret an individual who holds a certain standing within society.

“When the individual plays a part he implicitly requests his observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered before them. [...] When the individual has no belief in his own act and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term ‘sincere’ for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their own performance.” 

Goffman identifies the two main ways an individual can relate to the social role they inhabit. The cynical individual feels at odds with their role and finds nothing of themselves in it. By contrast, the sincere individual fully identifies with their role and finds themselves within it.

“It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its first meaning, is a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that everyone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role. […] It is in these roles that we know each other; it is in these roles that we know ourselves.”

Here Goffman cites Robert Ezra Park’s work on the concept of personhood or personality to convey the relevance of “performance” as a category of analyzing human social interaction. As Park notes, the origin of the word “person” can be traced back to the ancient word designating “mask”—the implication being that what we normally call “persons” or our “personality” is intimately tied to the various ways in which individuals try to appear in the best light possible in the presence of others. This attempt of making a good first impression is precisely what Goffman means by “performance”—we perform who we are not because we are secretly frauds, but because we are always trying to relate to other people so we feel appreciated or, at the very least, accepted.

“It will be convenient to label as ‘front’ that part of the individual’s performance which regularly functions in a general and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance. Front, then, is the expressive equipment of a standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individual during his performance. […] First, there is the ‘setting,’ involving furniture, decor, physical layout, and other background items which supply the scenery and stage props for the spate of human action played out before, within, or upon it. [...] If we take the term ‘setting’ to refer to the scenic parts of expressive equipment, one may take the term ‘personal front’ to refer to the other items of expressive equipment […] insignia of office or rank; clothing; sex, age, and racial characteristics; size and looks; posture; speech patterns; facial expressions; bodily gestures; and the like.” 

Goffman proposes “front” as a category of sociological study, a category that refers to the habitual actions that an individual undertakes to define their place within the interaction and notify the observers as to what they can expect on that basis. However, the notion of “front” should be understood in two ways. First there is a “setting,” which is nothing but the background or context in which the performance takes place (this includes furniture, atmosphere, building location, reputation of the institution, time of day, etc.). Then there is the “personal front,” which is made up of nonverbal cues that an observer can immediately identify regarding the performer (such as race, sex, gender, eloquence, manners, clothing, accent, etc.). Taken together, “setting” and “personal front” constitute the whole range of nonverbal, nonintentional information before an observer in the presence of a performer.

“It is sometimes convenient to divide the stimuli which make up personal front into ‘appearance’ and ‘manner’ […] ‘Appearance may be taken to refer to those stimuli which function at the time to tell us of the performer’s social statuses […] ‘Manner’ may be taken to refer to those stimuli which function at the time to warn us of the interaction role the performer will expect to play in the oncoming situation.” 

Goffman provides a more detailed analysis of the “personal front” that a performer maintains in the presence of their audience. For Goffman, a personal front is made up of two different elements: appearances and manners. Appearances refers to everything that a performer expresses, intentionally and unintentionally, that informs the observer about the performer’s social standing and social role. Manners refers to the subtler verbal and nonverbal social cues that tell the observer what kind of performance they should expect and how the performer understands themselves and the performance.

“[W]hen the individual presents himself before others, his performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the officially accredited values of the society, more so, in fact, than does his behavior as a whole.”

Here Goffman describes what he calls “idealization,” or people’s tendency to exaggerate their moral character to appear better than they are. Thus, idealization describes situations wherein performers act in such a way as to give off the impression that they are someone who approximates the ideals of their society, someone who adequately fulfills the responsibilities of their social role, and who thus deserves respect.

“One of the richest sources of data on the presentation of idealized performances is the literature on social mobility. […] Commonly we find that upward mobility involves the presentation of proper performances and that efforts to move upward and efforts to keep from moving downward are expressed in terms of sacrifices made for the maintenance of front. Once the proper sign-equipment has been obtained and familiarity gained in the management of it, then this equipment can be used to embellish and illumine one’s daily performances with a favorable social style.” 

Goffman provides what he considers the clearest example of idealization: individuals who strive to improve their socioeconomic standing. Individuals who try to improve their socioeconomic status idealize themselves insofar as they perform their social roles to be seen in the best possible light and to ultimately gain access to better employment or pay. Thus, idealization is not a moral flaw but constitutive of the performative nature of our selves; it is one tool among many available to individuals when navigating a particular social interaction.

“It is important to note that when an individual offers a performance he typically conceals something more than inappropriate pleasures and economies. Some of these matters for concealment may be suggested here. First […] the performer may be engaged in a profitable form of activity that is concealed from his audience and that is incompatible with the view of his activity which he hopes they will obtain. [...] Secondly, we find that errors and mistakes are often corrected before the performances take place. [...] Thirdly, in those interactions where the individual presents a product to others, he will tend to show them only the end product, and they will be led into judging him on the basis of something that has been finished, polished, and packaged [...] A fourth discrepancy […] may be cited. We find that there are many performances which could not have been given had not tasks been done which were physically unclean, semi-illegal, cruel, and degrading in other ways […] In Hughes’ terms, we tend to conceal from our audience all evidence of ‘dirty work,’ whether we do this work in private or allocate it to a servant, or to an illegitimate one. Closely connected with the notion of dirty work is a fifth discrepancy. […] If the activity of an individual is to embody several ideal standards, and if a good showing is to be made, it is likely then that some of these standards will be sustained in public by the private sacrifice of some of the others.” 

Goffman highlights the various aspects of an individual’s performance that are not evident to a given observer. These hidden aspects are significant because they not only give us a fuller and richer account of what actually takes place during the performance of a certain social role, but they also allow us to experience and know the reality of performances insofar as they are not the authentic presentation of the person we are interacting with. Rather, they are the expressions and gestures of an individual executing the duties and obligations that fall upon them due to the role they play in social and public settings. Thus, rather than seeing this as a negative feature of individuals, it is actually a helpful heuristic so that observers may better understand and appreciate what takes place before them in social settings.

“[W]e are helped in keeping this pose by clamps that are tightened directly on the body, some hidden, some showing: ‘Even if each woman dresses in conformity with her status, a game is still being played: artifice, like art, belongs to the realm of the imaginary. It is not only that girdle, brassiere, hair-dye, make-up disguise body and face; but that the least sophisticated of women, once she is “dressed,” does not present herself to observation; she is, like the picture or the statue, or the actor on the stage, an agent through whom is suggested someone not there; that is, the character she represents, but is not. It is this identification with something unreal, fixed, perfect as the hero of a novel, as a portrait or a bust, that gratifies her; she strives to identify herself with this figure and thus to seem to herself to be stabilized, justified in her splendor.’” 

Goffman cites Simone de Beauvoir to show how performers offer a fixed image of themselves as opposed to a dynamic and complicated picture of the totality of their personality. Goffman cites de Beauvoir on this point not only because she perfectly summarizes the discrepancy between a performance and the full complexity of the performer, but because her analysis confirms Goffman’s argument that the word “person” has origins in the ancient Greek term meaning “mask.” Performances produce an image of an individual that feels complete, static, a demonstration of their total character. In reality, each individual performer is dynamic, complex, and ever changing.

“[It] often happens that the performances serve mainly to express the characteristics of the task that is performed and not the characteristics of the performer. Thus one finds that service personnel [..] enliven their manner with movements which express proficiency and integrity […] to establish a favorable definition of their service or product [...] we commonly find that the definition of the situation projected by a particular participant is an integral part of a projection that is fostered and sustained by the intimate co-operation of more than one participant [...] I will use the term ‘performance team’ or, in short, ‘team’ to refer to any set of individuals who co-operate in staging a single routine.” 

Goffman shifts the unit of analysis from the individual performer to a group of performers, which he calls the “performance team” or “team.” Goffman shifts focus away from the individual performer to the team that acts in concert during a single performance because performances are the individual’s execution of a pattern of behaviors and expressions belonging to their role within society. Furthermore, individual performers act, more often than not, in relation to other performers carrying out similar or different social functions.

“It is apparent that individuals who are members of the same team will find themselves, by virtue of this fact, in an important relationship to one another. Two basic components of this relationship may be cited. First, it would seem that while a team-performance is in progress, any member of the team has the power to give the show away or to disrupt it by inappropriate conduct. [...] Secondly, it is apparent that if members of a team must co-operate to maintain a given definition of the situation before their audience, they will hardly be in a position to maintain that particular impression before one another [...] teammates tend to be related to one another by bonds of reciprocal dependence and reciprocal familiarity.” 

Goffman highlights the two distinct ways members of a single team relate to each other. First, when in the presence of observers or an audience, teammates strive to produce an impression of a cohesive group or unit. Second, when out of sight or away from their audience, teammates relate to each other in a different manner; that is, they adopt a less formal (familiar) manner. These two modes of relating within a single team constitute two sides of a group performance.

“There is, however, a meaningful contrast between the concepts team and clique. In large social establishments, individual within a given status level are thrown together by virtue of the fact that they must co-operate in maintaining a definition of the situation toward those above and below them. [...] Cliques […] often function to protect the individual not from persons of other ranks but from persons of his own rank. Thus, while all the members of one’s clique may be of the same status level, it may be crucial that not all persons of one’s status level be allowed into the clique.” 

Goffman distinguishes a team from a clique. Unlike teams that include all the members of a given status and whose mutual interactions, in front of and away from audiences, are governed by mutual dependence and reciprocal familiarity, cliques actively exclude individuals who may be part of the same social status as the members of the clique itself. Thus, what differentiates a clique from a team is that cliques are actively exclusionary groups even among members of their own social status.

“It seems to be generally felt that public disagreement among the members of the team not only incapacitates them from united action but also embarrasses the reality sponsored by the team. To protect this impression of reality, members of the team may be required to postpone taking public stands until the position of the team has been settled; and once the team’s stand has been taken, all members may be obliged to follow it.”

Goffman highlights the strategies employed by teams to resolve internal conflict while maintaining a positive and consistent public image or impression. It’s not only important that teams must maintain a semblance of a “party line” and resolve internal conflicts behind closed doors, away from the public’s eyes. It’s also important that the impression given off by a team performance must strive for the generality of a “party line” instead of the rich and detailed impression that is afforded to a single individual performer. In other words, groups maintain unity by resolving problems in a way that preserves the group’s public image.

“A region may be defined as any place that is bounded to some degree by barriers to perception.” 

Goffman offers his definition of “region,” which is a specific set of possible experiences that are delimited by a given place and a certain duration of time. It’s necessary to define this term in the study of group performances because groups are themselves bound to the space and time in which they perform, and they must ensure the audience experiences a continuity between the region, the performance, and their overall expectations of both.

“Given […] the various ways in which activity in the kitchen contradicted the impression fostered in the guests’ region of the hotel, one can appreciate why the doors leading from the kitchen to the other parts of the hotel were a constant sore spot in the organization of work. The maids wanted to keep the doors open to make it easier to carry food trays back and forth, to gather information about whether the guests were ready or not for the service which was to be performed for them. […] Since the maids played a servant role before the guests, they felt they did not have too much to lose by being observed in their own milieu by guests. […] The managers, on the other hand, wanted to keep the door closed so that the middle-class role imputed to them by the guests would not be discredited by a disclosure of their kitchen habits.” 

Goffman defines the different regions performers operate in. The “front” region is in the audience’s view, whereas the “back” region is unobservable to the audience. Additionally, Goffman argues that the discrepancy between how performers act in the presence of an audience and how they interact amongst themselves away from observation maps onto the region in which the performance itself takes place, as evidenced by his example of the restaurant’s spatial layout and the different ways workers behave in the kitchen (the back region) and in the dining area (the front region). Thus, insofar as groups maintain a “party line” in public while possibly disagreeing in private, these behaviors are also distributed relative to the space the performers occupy, whether it be an office building or a restaurant.

“[The] informer, the shill, the spotter, the shopper, and the go-between. In each case we find an unexpected, unapparent relation among feigned role, information possessed, and regions of access. And in each case we deal with someone who may participate in the actual interaction between the performers and audience. A further discrepant role may be considered, that of the ‘non-person’; those who play this role are present during the interaction but in some respects do not take the role either of performers or audience, nor do they (as do informers, shills, and spotters) pretend to be what they are not. Perhaps the classic type of non-person in our society is the servant.” 

Goffman provides a taxonomy of individuals whose actions and presence during a performance does not fall neatly within the category of performer or observer. Goffman classifies these as discrepant roles. An individual who holds a discrepant role is present for an interaction but has access to information that is not expected or is unknown to the performer and audience. For example, Goffman cites the phenomenon of professional or secret shoppers who may appear to be a member of the audience but who bring back information received from the performance to their employer, for the employer to use at their discretion. However, there is another class of discrepant roles that does not secretly perform in the interests of an absent performance team. Goffman labels these individuals “non-persons” and identifies the servant as the example par excellence. Servants have access to both the front and back regions of a performance, and they typically aid the host in maintaining a certain impression in light of the audience, but they are never agents who may influence the situation as a whole. Hence, Goffman writes, “While in some senses the servant is part of the host’s team […] in certain ways he is defined by both performers and audience as someone who isn’t there” (151).

“[C]rises [of communication] are exceptional, however; a working consensus and a public keeping of place is the rule. But underneath this typical gentleman’s agreement there are more usual but less apparent currents of communication. If these currents were not undercurrents […] they would contradict and discredit the definition of the situation officially projected by the participants. When a social establishment is studied, these discrepant sentiments are almost always found. They demonstrate that while a performer may act as if his response in a situation were immediate, unthinking, and spontaneous […] still it will always be possible for situations to arise in which he will convey to one or two persons present the understanding that the show he is maintaining is only and merely a show. The presence, then, of communication out of character provides one argument for the propriety of studying performances in terms of teams and in terms of potential interaction disruptions.” 

Goffman distinguishes between the public aspect of the dynamics of group performances and the private undercurrent of communication that transpires within a respective group, which, if it became public, would ruin the good impression the group is attempting to project. This type of communication among performers, which takes a form that typically contradicts the public role they inhabit, qualifies as “discrepant sentiments” and is a way performers communicate “out of character.” For Goffman, studying out-of-character communication is crucial to understanding team dynamics, as every performance team is always negotiating its impression with the audience as well as how to resolve internal group problems. Additionally, acknowledging these undercurrents of discrepant sentiments further proves Goffman’s thesis that regardless of what a performer or an observer may think about a given performance, the one who performs is always engaged in giving a static image of their role to their audience (as opposed to an individual showing their “true self” through their performance). Thus, discrepant sentiments speak to the fact that every performance tells an observer more about the individual’s role in society and less about who the individual really is.

“I have considered some major forms of performance disruption—unmeant gestures, inopportune intrusions, faux pas, and scenes. These disruptions, in everyday terms, are often called ‘incidents.’ When an incident occurs, the reality sponsored by the performers is threatened. The persons present are likely to react by becoming flustered, ill at ease, embarrassed, nervous, and the like. Quite literally, the participants may find themselves out of countenance [...] In order to prevent the occurrence of incidents and the embarrassment consequent upon them, it will be necessary for all participants in the interaction, as well as those who do not participate, to possess certain attributes and to express these attributes in practices employed for saving the show. These attributes and practices and are what constitute that class of actions called ‘impression management.’” 

Goffman outlines reasons why sociologists must account for a specific set of skills performers use to deal with “incidents”—moments wherein the performance’s impression is jeopardized by a single performer’s actions or gestures. Just as a performance team must cultivate a unified and coherent image that they present to the audience (what Goffman calls the party line), so too must they cultivate the skills to deal with moments of disruption. He terms these skills the “art of impression management.”

“To the degree that teammates and their colleagues form a complete social community which offers each performer a place and source of moral support regardless of whether or not he is successful in maintaining his front before the audience, to that degree it would seem that performers can protect themselves from doubt and guilt and practice any kind of deception.” 

Goffman outlines a largely ideal scenario for a group of performers. Since certain teammates may act out of character or even defect from the group and thereby threaten its overall impression, it is in the interest of every group to cultivate a sense of value and belonging among all performers and regardless of their faults or errors. The reason being that one of the key factors that leads a member to defect or ruin the performance stems from their sense of alienation and isolation from the group. Goffman calls cultivating a unified group dynamic “dramaturgical loyalty.”

“A performer who is disciplined, dramaturgically speaking, is someone who remembers his part and does not commit unmeant gestures or faux pas in performing it. He is someone with discretion; he does not give the show away by involuntarily disclosing its secrets. He is someone with ‘presence of mind’ who can cover up on the spur of the moment for inappropriate behavior on the part of his teammates, while all the time maintaining the impression that he is merely playing his part. And if a disruption of the performance cannot be avoided or concealed, the disciplined performer will be prepared to offer a plausible reason for discounting the disruptive event, a joking manner to remove its importance, or deep apology and self-abasement to reinstate those held responsible for it. The disciplined performer is also someone with ‘self-control.’ [...] someone with sufficient poise to move from private places of informality to public ones of varying degrees of formality, without allowing such changes to confuse him.”

Goffman describes “dramaturgical discipline,” an impression management technique that is classified as a “defensive measure.” Dramaturgical discipline involves rigorous training and rehearsal of one’s role prior to the performance to avoid any missteps or unintended impressions. Goffman classifies this as a defensive measure because it is something a team can employ prior to the performance to avoid and prevent possible disruptions. Moreover, because it is unrealistic to expect every performer to carry out their role flawlessly, Goffman also identifies other “defensive” and “protective” measures that a performance team can rely on in the event of an interruption.

“[It] will be useful if the members of the team exercise foresight and design in determining in advance how best to stage a show. Prudence must be exercised [...] In other words, in the interest of the team performers will be required to exercise prudence and circumspection in staging the show, preparing in advance for likely contingencies and exploiting the opportunities that remain.” 

Goffman describes another impression management technique that performers can use to avoid any possible disruption. Prudence or “dramaturgical circumspection” is a defensive measure that gives careful thought and planning to the organization of the space and the number of audience members admitted into the space. Such preemptive measures, devised prior to the performance, allow performers to enact their roles with greater peace of mind since they have prepared for any contingency that may arise.

“[W]hen outsiders find they are about to enter [a back region], they often give those already present some warning, the form of a message, or a knock, or a cough, so that the intrusion can be put off if necessary or the setting hurriedly put in order and proper expressions fixed on the faces of those present. This kind of tact can become nicely elaborated.” 

Goffman describes various forms of etiquette used by both performers and audience members. Given that this passage comes in the middle of Goffman’s discussion of the “arts of impression management,” this example gives Goffman grounds to elucidate a specific technique employed by performers to manage the audience’s overall impression of the performance: reinforcement of norms and cultural etiquette. In other words, by reinforcing commonly known norms of social behavior, performers can manage the audience’s impression by avoiding moments where they disrupt the situation and enter a region of the performance space in which they are not supposed to go.

“Impression, in turn, has been treated as a source of information about unapparent facts and as a means by which the recipients can guide their response to the information without having to wait for the full consequences of the informant’s actions to be felt. Expression, then, has been treated in terms of the communicative role it plays during social interaction and not, for example, in terms of consummatory or tension release function it might have for the expressor. Underlying all social interaction there seems to be a fundamental dialectic. When one individual enters the presence of others, he will want to discover the facts of the situation. Were he to possess this information, he would know, and make allowances for, what will come to happen and he could give the others present as much of their due as is consistent with his enlightened self-interest. […] Full information […] is rarely available […] In short, since the reality that the individual is concerned with is unperceivable at the moment, appearances must be relied upon in its stead. And, paradoxically, the more the individual is concerned with the reality that is not available to perception, the more must he concentrate his attention on appearances.” 

Goffman summarizes some of the book’s key concepts to show how information gathered from observing performances and roles has more to do with how we perceive a given reality than the nature of said reality. Despite the observer’s best attempts, they will never have access to the totality of information within a given performance and thus must rely upon their powers of inference to make sense of the rules and expectations of the situation as a whole. Thus, if observers must construct the boundaries of a given interaction based upon their best possible inferences, if “appearances must be relied upon,” this means that the audience’s object is the overall impression that they glean from the performance itself. It is for this reason that audiences and performers alike are preoccupied with “impressions” rather than “reality,” since social interactions are a collective construction and questioning of the impressions one gives and gives off.