NOTE 2: A visual has been added at the bottom. I made the visual using a freeware program called LibreOffice Draw. You can find it at the LibreOffice site here.
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Title: “The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life” from Introductory Sociology Reader by R.
Hensley and R. Castro
Writer: Erving
Goffman
My Summary: In this text, writer Erving Goffman explains
how in everyday interaction, people use signs in order to present to others who
they are and what is going on in terms of, e.g., their feelings and thoughts.
The recipients of these signs must interpret them and infer what type of
interaction they are in and, therefore, how they should behave toward the
person emitting these signs.
Lesson #1
When people encounter each other in
everyday interactions, they operate much like detectives who are trying to
figure out “What is the case? What’s going on?” They may find themselves asking
questions like “What type of interaction is at hand? Does this person want me
to treat them like a man or woman? Can I trust what this person says? What are
they thinking? What are they feeling? Does this person have an ulterior motive?”
and so on. And like detectives, they have to use clues to answer these and
similar questions. Ultimately, they seek to answer the question “How should I
behave in this interaction?” and particularly “How should I behave in this
interaction in order to get what I want?”
Goffman
terms these clues that we use to answer these questions “sign-vehicles” (64).
Sign-vehicles can be any form of appearance that can be used to indicate
information about an individual presenting these signs, such as behavioral
appearances (e.g., tapping a pen on a desk, pacing back and forth) or
non-behavioral appearances (e.g., skin color, bone structure, genitalia, driver’s
license, clothes). Suppose that you walk into a room and you see someone
sitting at a desk. You notice their bone structure, their long hair, the name
on their driver’s license which is sticking out of their wallet, and the type
of clothes that they are wearing – a skirt; you use these appearances to infer further
information that they are a female and a woman. You notice that they are also
tapping their pen on their desk and that every now and then, they get up and
pace back and forth. You use these behavioral sign-vehicles to infer the
information that they are nervous about something. Being a sympathetic person,
you engage them in conversation in an attempt to calm them down a bit, to get
their mind off of whatever is making them nervous. As you can see, whenever
someone else appears before you, or vice versa, you use any available
appearances and assumptions about these appearances to make guesses, to infer
information that is not directly present. Armed with this inferred information,
you can direct interactions according to your desire, ethics, etc. by
controlling how you appear (both behaviorally and non-behaviorally) to those
with which you interact.
But
things aren’t so simple. Not all sign-vehicles are expressed on purpose. In a
scene of season 2 episode 3 of BBC’s Sherlock,
Watson and Sherlock are in their flat. Sherlock is pacing back and forth, while
Watson is examining the expression on his face. He then tells Sherlock in a
frustrated way to stop doing that – i.e., to stop making that face. Sherlock
asks him to what face he is referring, and Watson replies that he has a look on
his face that says “we both know what’s going on”, and Watson doesn’t know what’s
going on. Sherlock was accidentally expressing himself, unintentionally
emitting sign-vehicles which conveyed an impression to Watson. Goffman calls
these unintentional expressions “expressions given off”; alternatively,
intentional expressions such as a nod to indicate that you are listening to a
speaker are termed by Goffman “expressions given” (66). Or as in the example
above, Watson’s statement to Sherlock is considered an expression given because
he intentionally expressed it in order to redirect the interaction (i.e., to
get Sherlock to tell him what is going on). It seems to me that Goffman uses
these two different types of expression to refer primarily to behavior as
opposed to nonbehavioral appearances (68-70). Though, if he doesn’t do so, then
I’m sure that his framework could be extended to sign-vehicles other than
behavior. So, for example, let’s say that you are at a restaurant with a trans
man, i.e., he is considered a female (by most biological criteria), but he
performs his gender as a man or in a masculine manner. When the server comes up
to take your orders, they address him as “ma’am”. What happened here? His more
female characteristics such as his stature and his tone of voice were used by
the server to infer that he was trying to perform as a woman, even though he
was trying to perform as a man in actuality. Perhaps we could consider these
female characteristics to be expressions given off, since they were unintentionally
expressed and used by the server to incorrectly determine how to treat him.
A still
further complication of expressions is the fact that people can use expressions
given off to check expressions given. For example, you could ask someone if
they like the meal that you cooked for them, and they might say yes. But you
can use the facial expressions given off that they make while eating (e.g., a
look of disgust) in order to determine if they are lying. Now perhaps this
person assumes that you will be looking for these expressions given off, so
they fake them. They hide their disgust with controlled facial expressions
given. Goffman calls this “calculated unintentionality” (70), which consists of
faking expressions given off; they are fake because they are intentional but
made to look unintentional. Goffman hypothesizes that, in general, it is easier
to spot calculated unintentionality than to generate it. So the interpreter
tends to have the upper hand over the presenter. In short, through these sign-vehicles,
individuals in the presence of others intentionally and unintentionally define
what is going on in their interaction – they define the definition of the situation.
One “projects
a definition of the situation”(68/70) whenever their expressions are used by
others 1) to formulate an impression about what is going on in the interaction
and 2) to behave according to this impression. Watson used Sherlock’s
expressions in order to formulate the impression that Sherlock knew what was
going on and that he thought Watson also knew. Watson then proceeded to act as
if this impression was made by expressing to Sherlock that he didn’t know what was
going on. This seems to imply that even
if the guest eating your food says that they enjoy the food, and you don’t
believe them (in which case, their intended impression has failed), then,
regardless of your reaction, they have still conveyed an impression, and, as
long as you behave according to whatever impression that you receive, they have
projected a definition of the situation; in this case, its not exactly the one
that they intended. The polite thing to
do in return to their politeness would be to politely thank them for their kind
(and presumably dishonest) remarks. This
is polite because it is what you assume that they expect you to do. This fact seems to indicate something
important about expressions and situation definitions: many of them are idiomatic. They have a
certain routine formula or a script
according to which we carry out interactions.
For example, if I ask a question, then you are expected to answer; if I
greet you, then you are expected to reciprocate this with a greeting; etc. It is because of this routine character of
interactions that we can accurately anticipate what will or could happen next. Interactions or situations are like games;
they have rules, action sequences, and players; and in order to figure out
which game you are playing or expected to play by someone presenting a self to
you, you need to use their expressions to formulate a definition of the
situation, and then behave accordingly.
Definitions
of situations can be highly unstable.
Take a wrong turn in your expression or look hard enough at a presenter’s
expressions, and the definition can shift at the drop of a hat. For example, suppose that you are in a
supermarket parking lot, and someone with whom you’ve just crossed paths starts
some friendly conversation. The
conversation is enjoyable and seemingly non-threatening, so you define the
situation as “a fun fleeting conversation with a stranger”; however, you soon
realize that they are holding a pamphlet in their hand that says something
about ‘eternal hellfire’. Suddenly, your
definition shifts (“This is a parking lot preacher”), and you begin to make
every attempt to elude and exit the interaction. Or suppose perhaps that you and your trans
friend have been interacting with some people at a party. The interaction was going well (“This is a
friendly party conversation”), but one of the people with whom you were
conversing notices that as your trans friend (who appeared to be a man) exits
the interaction and goes into the women’s restroom. The mood changes as this person becomes uneasy,
since their definition of the situation has changed (“That’s not a male!?”),
and this person has been acquainted with no idiomatic scripts or rules for how
to interact with a trans person as a non-trans person—in this case, as a man—even
though they were doing fine before discovering this new bit of info.
In some if not all applicable situations,
people behave as if an unsuccessful intended impression was successful because
they are morally expected to do so. So, for example, perhaps the person who
becomes uneasy, because your friends intended impression has failed, works
through their uneasiness because they recognize transgender people as a
legitimate idiomatic social status and assume that a trans man has a moral
right to expect to be treated as a man.
This moral right of a presenter to expect to be treated according to the
type of person that they claim to be is one of three moral principles that
Goffman elaborates (71). They are as
follows: 1) a presenter has a moral
right to expect others to treat them the way a person of their type deserves to
be treated (e.g., treat a man like a man, a woman like a woman, a child like a
child, a cop like a cop, etc.), 2) someone receiving this presentation has a
moral obligation to treat them as they expect to be treated, 3) a presenter has
a moral obligation to make honest claims as to who they are and how they
deserve to be treated (e.g., if you claim to be a man, then you should be a man
in fact). It seems to me that this last moral principle might illuminate the
uneasiness felt by both trans people and those not used to interacting with
them; it is as if the former are telling a lie, in that they are claiming to be
something that these others with whom they interact do not believe them to be
(e.g., they see a trans man as not a man, and, therefore, possibly as a liar).
There is a fourth principle that
Goffman mentions. This one is not moral per se. It is a principle of exclusion:
when someone makes a claim to be something (e.g., a man), they are forgoing any
claims to be things that they do not appear to be, and, therefore, they are
forgoing any treatment appropriate to these things that they are not (e.g., a
woman). In the case of your trans friend, this might also be a strong source of
uncertainty and uneasiness. For some (particularly the unacquainted), a trans man
appears to be making two different claims at once; through their expressions
given, they are claiming to be a man; but through their expressions given off,
they appear to be claiming to be a woman. In these situations, the definition
of the situation is often unclear or the script or rules for such a situation
are not defined; so, for example, a person might be confused regarding how they
should treat a trans person – do they use the rules for women, men, or neither?
Or perhaps they know what is expected of them in terms of the rules of the
interaction, but the force of their habit gets the better of them. For example,
in an interaction with the trans man, they unintentionally give off
expressions; they say “she” and “her” when they intend to use “he” and “his” as
expressions given. No matter how good of a detective they are at inferring what
type of situation they’re in and, therefore, which game they should play, the
cultural competence necessary to play this or any social game only comes with
practice.
Possible applications
(or related topics): can enable comprehension of deception, everyday
interaction, misgendering, stereotyping, sexuality (in terms of the
presentation of signs of the object of desire such as “male” or “female” or
“man” or “woman”), gender, the production of interactions through signs and
inferential processes in factory-situations, news editing as impression
management, keeping things private, control and manipulation of people in order
to get them to do what you want, online definition of the situation
References:
Goffman, Ervning (1959/2010) The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life. Introductory Sociology Reader by R. Hensley and R. Castro. Pgs. 63-72.
That is definitely a great example of what you want and looking for.
ReplyDeleteThanks. Checkout the visual that I added.
Deleteupdated 10/6: added the visual
ReplyDelete