Dramaturgical traditions: performance and interaction

This chapter considers the ways in which social actors construct, display, and perform the scenes in which they appear. Together, they cooperate to define situations with an interpretative frame, drawing upon shared repertoires of tacit knowledge. Focusing on Goffman’s dramaturgy as a branch of symbolic interactionism, the chapter begins with the metaphor of the theatre as a representation of social life. Individuals perform situation-based roles as if they were characters, scripted and rehearsed to meet the normative demands of each context and audience. This self-presentation involves techniques of impression management, such as facework, concealment, dramaturgical circumspection, and movement between the frontstage and backstage regions. Identity performances can therefore seem relatively sincere (authentic) or cynical (contrived). Collectively, dramaturgical loyalty is practiced through social processes of teamwork, supportive interchange, and remedial ritual. These mechanisms contribute to the display of normal appearances that serves to uphold the interaction order.