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... Teams hold together because they feel a mutual dependence for one another (Goffman E. 1959 p. 88). Team members create group cohesion. What one performer wants the other can provide and vice versa.
So this a rules for teams, which Goffman marks: team form membership with one another; it is avoid to any member of the team to have a long stranding relationships with other members of the time; members of the team can be accepted straight away, as with work colleagues. Protection of a reputation is a main aspect of being in the team. (As it is shown in impression management). So being part of a team mean circumspect planning. The members need to have airtight play.
For this each actor has to share all his information with others. E. Goffman states, "To withhold from a team mate information about the stand his team is taking is in fact to withhold his character from him." (Goffman E. 1959 p. 94) A team membership also needs professional etiquette. (Goffman E. 1959 p. 95) It means that members of the team must keep professional respect for one another. Any team member will never discredit or behave disrespectful to the others performance in front of spectators. By Goffman, a team is like a kind of secret society with its exclusive membership. He says, " A team, as used herein, is the kind of secret society, even an exclusive one" (Goffman E. 1959 p. 108) Region and Region Behavior The conception of region is partly the setting, but mostly all areas are visible to the spectators.
The area that is visible to spectators is called the 'Front region'. The region behavior needs here is what E. Goffman calls decorum. He states that decorum is needed cause even though the performer may be in the background area he is still visible to spectators and they still can judge him." Performers can stop giving expressions but cannot stop giving them off" (Goffman E. 1959 p. 111) Anything the performers do in the front region can detract from the main play and exclude other members of the team. E. Goffman uses such example: the foreign emigrants want to speak in their own language.
Small talks the was allowed to everyone, but not in their language cause nobody in the team cant understand them. The back region is the hided area where the spectators cant see the actors. Performers separates it by a screen so it is there waiting if the help is needed still cant be seen by audience. The back region is for actors only, here they can relax.
The back region is very important because it hides all the tools of the play. There situated actors make up, the props and the costumes. If this things will see the spectators it will open the secrets of the play, so they must be kept away, where no one will see them. A third region is outside. These are the areas, which are not in the back or in the front area. The outside area is that area which kept away from both of these.
A person situated in this area is called like an outsider. Discrepant Roles Very significant part of the play is to have a role. For example: the director, performer and back stage helper. Discrepant roles are the less evident roles, which the spectators cant determine. Discrepant roles are required cause of the secrets that teams own. They are dark secrets, inside secrets, strategic secrets, entrusted secrets and free secrets.
The people who know about such kind of secrets hold discrepant roles (the role is what they are put into then). E. Goffman gives such identification of the 3 main roles in a play: those who act, those acted to and outsiders. Discrepant roles are those who blur the other roles. First, the informer, the trusted team member who actually opens the secrets to the spectators. Secondly goes the shill.
A member of team who is sitting in a room like a member of the spectators, but really he recording the responses to report back. Thirdly we have the mediator. This is a member of 2 teams. He gives to each team the favoritism impression while really is opens each other's teams secrets in turn. According to E. Goffman the mediator is a double shill, really.
Another role is the spotter. He is actually outside the team and is a specialist member of spectators. They watch actors to find and to correct mistakes. Communication out of character The conception of communication out of character (OOC) is how actors perform out of their character. This happens when the spectators are no longer present in room and the performers can relax. It often happens that the performers ridicule the spectators if they had caused problems, discussing how they feel the play went.
This is not revealed to the spectators cause this is part of the secrets of the team. That was the main parts of E. Goffman theory and my analysis of it. Now I want to turn to another talented sociologist George Herbert Mead. George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 April 26, 1931) was an American sociologist, philosopher and psychologist. He is known as one of the founders of social psychology.
G. H. Made theory of how the self and mind appears from the social process of communication by signs which founded the sociology and social psychology symbolic interactions school. G. H. Mead gave his anti positivistic point of view that the individual is a society's product.
By G. H. Mead idea the Self is practical with pragmatic purposes. G. H. Mead ingrained the human in a "manipulatory phase of the act" as the basic means of living.
In this sphere the individual abides with the physical objects of everyday life (Mead 1938: 267). People's "manipulatory phase of the act" is mediated by society. That means that in performing towards objects individuals take the perspectives of other people towards the object itself. G. H.
Mead names it as "the social act" and opposes it to just "the act." Mead says that animals also manipulate objects, but it this case this are non-social manipulations because animals dont take the perspective of other creatures toward the object. There are no equal to humans in taking the perspective of other performers towards objects. And exactly this is that factor what enables our complex society and delicate social coordination. G. H.
Mead also was sure that the Self's perception and meaning sociologically and deeply in "a common praxis of subjects" found specifically in social collisions. By G. H. Mead the Self proves to be considerably entwined within a sociological existence.
By G. H. Mead theory existence in human community stays on the first place and individual consciousness goes after. Mead says that individual must participate in the social positions within society firstly and only after that one can use that experience for taking the perspective of other people and so become self-conscious.
G. H. Mead wrote in his Mind, Self and Society that we begin our understanding of the social life in the world through "game" and "play." Firstly the "Play" comes the development of a child. Every child takes on the roles he or she sees in "adult" society, and then plays in different characters to gain an experience and understanding of the different social roles. For example, a child first can play the role of policeman and after that the role of robber. Later the child can participate in the game, for example in football or baseball.
In this case he must relate to other players and understand the games rules very good. While playing with others he learns that he must relate to norms of behavior because only in this case he will be accepted as a player of the team. G. H.
Mead names this the first encounter of the child with "the generalized other." This is one of the main aspects of G. H. Mead conception. "The generalized other" one can understand as the general norm inside a social group. The understanding of the "the generalized other" helps to the individual to understand what kind of behavior is needed in different social settings and groups.
School, football team, the family and society are all instances of social settings. With their help the child gradually develops his understanding of norms for behavior. G. H.
Mead gives distinction between the "I" and the "me. " By Mead the "me" is the stored knowledge and understanding of "the generalized other" (norms, patterns of social response, opinions, etc). And the "I" in his theory is the more personal opinions and all what creates the individuality of the human. It is significant while reading G. H.
Mead to mind that he sees the human mind as something that arises only through social experience. George Herbert Meads career lasted about 40 years. During this time he published a great numbers of articles and books in philosophy. After authors death, many of them were published as Mind, Self and Society in 1934. Perhaps the main contribution of G. H.
Mead one can see as the attempt to show us how the human "self" is "not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity" (Mead, G. H. 1934 chapter 18). What now people call our self is actually something that develops in the social interaction process using different symbols. Theories based on Mead's conception were later called "symbolic interactions." Mead's Theatre Imagery In E. Goffman's theory there are a lot of ideas about the development of the Self. For George Herbert Mead it was one of the 3 levels of our social reality (mind, self, society) which he analyzed.
This is how G. H. Mead wrote about the self: "the language process is essential for the development of the self. The self has a character which is different from that of the physiological organism proper.
The self is something which has a development; it is not initially there, at birth, but arises in the process of social experience and activity, that is, develops in the given individual as a result of his relations to that process as a whole and to other individuals within that process. The intelligence of the lower forms of animal life, like a great deal of human intelligence, does not involve a self. " (Mead 1934 par. 18. 1) Theory of G. H. Mead based on such idea: mind, self and society start their develop from the preceding natural gestures (inter-actions) of animals. Animals often play at fighting bur actually they dont do so. G.
H. Mead calls the moves in such play-acting as gestures. Mead gives an example: a symbol of the real thing is like a sudden snap in the air without real biting. Also a good example perhaps is games of fox cubs. The vixen looks on this like some kind of animal theatre. Human children have far complicated games: play acting goes further, the roles are internalized so that they can run through their performance in their own mind.
This is the way how the conception of self arises. By such play the child learns to think about her or himself as if she or he was another woman or man and then to see how they can interact with other people on the lifes stage. Theatrical imagery of G. H.
Mead relates to role play, or, as the author calls it himself - the "Genesis if the Self." In early years of being a child parents can often see that their child plays in a characters that are different of their own self. Very often children create their imaginary friends and companions and play with them. Sometimes the child adopts the role of a parent to their pet, or the roles which he or she has seen in a television or at book pages. Children very often use "props" for enhancing the reality of the play. A cat very easy becomes a little baby much to its dislike. While playing all alone the child can perform a number of characters and roles at one time and talk to them.
G. H. Mead states that all of such characters actions and their responses are used by the child which they then utilize to build their Self. Like E.
Goffman, G. H. Mead states that the success of a "performance or role play" is indispensable for building the self and self esteem. When animals play in their games they practice the skills that were taught by their parents. As example we can look at kittens. They learn hunting and pouncing, therefore while playing kittens often pounce on each other.
But they dont take on a role, they do not pretend to be humans. "But we do not have in such a situation the dogs taking a definite role in the sense that a child deliberately takes the role of another. " (Mead 1934 par. 19. 11) This is where humans behavior can show the presence of a Self that has its own consciousness, being self conscious. "Man's behavior is such in his social group that he is able to become an object to himself, a fact which constitutes him a more advanced product of evolutionary development than are the lower animals. Fundamentally it is this social fact- and not his alleged possession of a soul or mind with which he, as an individual, has been mysteriously and supernaturally endowed, and with which the lower animals have not been endowed- that differentiates him from them. " (Mead 1934 par. 18. 3 footnote 1) Unlike animals children take on roles which are around them. They look at other peoples behavior and then just copy them. "He arrests himself as a policeman. He has a set of stimuli which call out himself the sort of responses they call out in others.
He takes this group of responses and organizes them into a certain whole. Such is the simplest form of being another to one's self. " (Mead 1934 par. 19. 11) BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Goffman E. , 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. 2. Goffman E. , 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates.
New York, Doubleday. 3. Mead, G. H. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Ed. by C.
W. Morris. University of Chicago Press. 4. Mead, G.
H. 2001. Essays in Social Psychology. Ed. by M. J. Deegan.
Transaction Books.
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Research essay sample on Symbolic Interactions George Herbert
