Erving Goffman and the Performed Self

♪ (light jazz music) ♪
(chattering)

"All the world's a stage

and all the men
and women merely players;

they have their exits
(knife slicing)

and their entrances,
(baby crying)

and one man in his time
plays many parts..."

The sociologist Erving Goffman
took these lines

from As You Like It
very seriously.

In his dramaturgical account
of human interaction,

he argued that we display
a series of masks to others,

enacting roles,

controlling and staging
how we appear,

ever concerned
with how we are coming across,

constantly trying to set ourselves
in the best light.

According to Goffman,
(page turns)

we play a range of different parts
(speaking angrily)

determined by the situations
we take ourselves to be in

and how we think
we are coming across.

We adapt what we are depending
on who we are interacting with.

This is most apparent

in awkward situations
(cheering)

where we suddenly find ourselves
trying to play two inconsistent roles.

As for example, when
we accidentally encounter friends

from very different social groups
and have to juggle masks.

The analogy with acting only goes
so far for Goffman, though,

because in his view,
there is no true self,

no identifiable performer
behind the roles.

The roles just are the performer.

He challenged the idea
that each of us has

a more or less fixed character,
a psychological identity.

At least in the role
of author

of The Presentation of Self
in Everyday Life, he did.

♪ (light jazz music) ♪

♪ (light jazz music) ♪