The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life

Performance and audience are two of the text’s central themes. In analyzing the roles that individuals play in the presence of others on a daily basis, Goffman offers the notion of “performance” as a way of classifying this specific type of social interaction. However, Goffman argues that all performances are done with the help and cooperation of others who also carry out their own performance (a group of performers constituting what he calls a team). Thus, the sociological category of performance, while applicable to the level of the individual, mainly pertains to a group of individuals acting in concert toward a shared end in the presence of an observing public. It is this observing public that Goffman terms “audience,” since they are those individuals who are present for a performance but do not participate in the construction of a situation or try to leave a particular impression upon those around them. Thus, what distinguishes performers from their audience is that performers work together to create a specific impression that they want their viewers to experience (e.g., the experience of good customer service on the part of a restaurant staff where the customers would constitute the audience). Moreover, if we want to understand the self as it appears in everyday life, we must study this intersection between audience and performers, since selves are merely the impressions and images an audience forms when observing an individual carrying out a certain social role (whether or not the individual performs that role successfully or unsuccessfully).