W12.2-Dramaturgy (sociology)

 1) Summarize 

Dramaturgy is a sociological perspective often used in micro-sociological descriptions of social interactions in everyday life. (The term was originally adapted from theatre into sociology by Erving Goffman, who developed most of its terms and ideas in his 1956 book Self-Presentation in Everyday Life.)

According to Goffman, there are seven important factors in acting: 

Believe in the role one is playing: Belief is important, even if it cannot be judged by others; The audience can only try to guess whether the performer is sincere or cynical.

Front (or "mask"): Standardized, generalizable, and transferable techniques used by performers to control the way the audience perceives them. We wear different masks all our lives.

Dramatic realization: Depict aspects of the performer that they want the audience to know. When performers want to emphasize something, they will carry it out dramatically, for example, to show how accomplished a person is when dating to make a good first impression.

Idealization: Performances often present an idealized [questionable - discussed] view of the situation to avoid confusion (misstatement) and reinforce other elements (e.g., frontier, dramatic realization). The audience usually has an "idea" of what a given situation (performance) should look like, and the performer will try to act according to that idea.

Maintain control of expression: "Character" needs to be maintained. Performances must ensure that they send out the right signals and suppress the occasional misguided urge to convey what might affect the performance.

Misrepresentation: The danger of misinformation. The audience tends to think the performance is real or fake, and performers usually want to avoid the audience disbelieving them (whether they are real or not).

Mystification: Withholding certain information from the audience, whether to increase the audience's interest in the user or avoid revealing information that could damage the performer.

2) Interesting point

I think the most interesting point is that impression management refers to the job of maintaining the desired impression, which consists of defense and protection techniques. Guard techniques are used to mask errors and are used only after the interaction has begun. For example, relying on the audience to use tact and ignoring the performer's mistakes. I still remember I saw a movie called The Truman Show in class. There was a scene in the movie that impressed me very much. Truman bought newspapers as usual, he said he would buy newspapers for his wife every day because his wife liked reading them very much.

3) Discussion point

What examples can you think of based on Goffman's daily self-presentation?