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Example research essay topic: Theory Of Social Social Interaction - 2,489 words

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Erving Goffman's contribution into the notion of the social interaction The aim of the present paper is to look through the sociological notions provided by Goffman through his books, especially in relation to the social interaction. It is essential to critically evaluate the contribution which Goffman has made through his dramaturgical theory of social interaction and through the development of new notions included into this theory. Goffman has always been interested in knowing the cores of the society's behavior, as well as the study of social interaction. His theory of social interaction is often called dramaturgical, because the view of social life by Goffman was conducted through the theatrical metaphors. According to Goffman, and reflecting the core essence of his theory of social interaction, we live our lives on the stage and this causes us to be performers. From the critical viewpoint, Goffman was of course the initiator of this theory and has become the author of numerous notions and suggestions as for the social interaction; however it is often argues that his suggestions and ideas were critically influenced by other sociologists and theories and thus lose their value in the social theory as such.

Though it is not surprising that Goffman put the research of the society into the center of his studies, but he was the first to suggest that society existed in contradistinction with the individual, as separate concepts and entities, the interrelation of which was complex and rather problematic for studying and identifying the laws and rules of this interaction. One of the contributions which Goffman made into the social theory was through the creation of the new thematic area of sociology and the specific vocabulary, which cannot be supposed to be strictly terminology, because terminological unit should be kept unchanged within all contexts, but Goffman was the first sociologists who unveil the notions along the metaphorical spiral. The semantics of the Goffman's language is determined not by the contents of the notions, but by the use of them in various contexts. (Turner 1986) Most of Goffman's attention goes to the different techniques and processes that are involved with the constitution of the self in interaction. This includes the use of props to present ones self, the control of the audience, and impression management. The techniques of impression management include: the concealment of the secret pleasures of previous performances, the concealment of errors, concealment of the process of the performance (only showing the end-product), concealment of dirty-work, and mystification, i. e.

performers create a social distance so that the audience cannot question the actor. These techniques can be seen as means of self-control, that is, dramaturgical discipline to handle or avoid embarrassment. The important feature of Goffman's terminology, created in relation to social interaction, is that according to Williams (1988) it does not need to be translated into other languages and is supposed to be universal and understandable to all language carriers. However, this is not the most important aspect of his contribution into sociological science. Many sociologists criticize Goffman for having copied the basic notions of the symbolic interactions. It is no secret that Goffman's research was developed under the impact of Herbert Blumer, who was working in Chicago until 1952, and then at the Berkeley University.

Bloomer was the one to suggest the term 'symbolic interactions' in 1937, which has later acquired wide spreading and was meaning certain style of the person who was participating in the watching of the social relations in the role of observer. Blumer's three basic postulates were related to social interaction in the following: social action as such does not have any meaning and is based on the meanings which are given to it; the meaning of the action is the derivative from the social interaction; action is continuously transformed though the process of social interaction. Goffman's contribution was probably meaningful from the viewpoint of the development of the new notions and understandings of the social interaction, but it should be admitted that the basis for his ideas were still Bloomer's postulates and he was getting the knowledge for his books and contemplations from Blumer's works. Goffman was following the thematic flow of symbolic interactions, though he never shared its individualistic methodology.

Of course, he went deeper in his sociological works, and came to the conclusion that organizations and institutions provide interaction of people as those who possess social statuses, and he stated that studying social interaction is not studying the individual and its psychology, but the syntactical relations between the actions of different people, finally coming to the conclusion that actions and people don't depend on each other. (Turner 1986) The notion of performance is totally reconsidered by Goffman. While the American sociology the opposition of quality/ performance has acquired detailed description and consideration as the two opposite and achieved statuses, the system of Parsons, for example, they have acquired the pair of categories ascription/ achievement. Certain social statuses and the corresponding properties are considered to be ascribed gender, age, race, etc. while the achieved ones are prestige, income, education. The problem of this approach was in the fact that it was difficult to settle the forms of the social orientation, which could state ascriptions and achievements as the basic types of the social regulation. Considering the properties and characteristics of an actor, in the measure of his position within the social system, one speaks about his status, and as a consequence his performance.

In distinction from Parsons, Goffman paid attention to the inner structure of performances. Performance in his theory is determined as the activity of the participant of the given situation which is meant at impacting the rest of the participants in any way. (Turner 1986) Goffman has made the thesis as for the concealing of the real essence of the social object is subjected to the social order and this ultimately impact the social interaction. To make it clear, it can be explained through the notions of quality and performance the way the person conceals his real essence and demonstrates false masks, is the social fact and shows the essence of the social interaction. Both masks real and false are the reality, and the language serves both for the displaying and for concealing of the thoughts. The theatrical character of the social interaction is interpreted by Goffman as the necessary condition of the individual ability to divide the one whole 'Self' into numerous separate 'Selves' the combination of the analyzed performances. We are social creatures and as a result we crave social interaction.

Goffman has been hailed a very important model in studying symbolic interactions and that is why I am focusing on two main characteristics of his (Manning 1992). For Goffman, apparently empty gestures, like quickly glancing away from those we do not know, are interpersonal rituals (Manning 1992). Another good example of interpersonal rituals would the Shetland Isle example from Goffman's "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life." In his book 'Frame analysis' Goffman writes that the world is not the theatre, but the theatre is the most real reality, if it is possible to say so. Even the theatre is the reality, and it is not possible to measure it with theatrical criteria. Together with the radical re-consideration of the dramaturgical metaphor, Goffman comes to the new understanding of performance, and this is another serious contribution into the theory of social interaction according to him, performance is the arrangement which turns the individual into the stage performer, who in his turn, is the object of observation on the side of people, who form the audience; this performer may be viewed from different viewpoints and angles, and without any threat of being offended, because his actions are meant at being observed. Social interaction thus appears in Goffman's interpretation as the process of acting for the purpose of being seen but not judged.

He was able to distinguish different kinds of performance one of them is 'clear performance, where both audience and the performers are absent. As an example, Goffman gives a night club, where with the development of the night activity audience is being involved into it gradually. All these situations are characterized by the shift of the actual interaction towards the determining frame. Thus, ultimately Goffman was able to view the personality as the combination of the social relations, or frames, which the person, in distinction from the stage, cannot leave. (Turner 1986) Dramaturgical interpretation if the social interaction has been criticized by Blumer in his observation of the Goffman's book 'Public relations'. According to him, Goffman ignored the specifics of the intra personal communication, the differences between 'the attitudes towards the subject' and 'the attitudes towards another' were erased and the interaction analysis was turned into the analysis of action; the participants of the social interaction according to Blumer were mostly represented by the spectators and the performers and not by the partners. However, this does not make the contribution of Goffman into the theory of social interaction less meaningful. (Williams 1988) The novelty and the contribution of Goffman is also seen through the fact that he analyzes the ordinary, everyday people in everyday life, circumstances in which personal ruin is more literary than real, in which the price to be paid for failure is not much greater than embarrassment, circumstances in which efforts to sustain creditable selves are largely successful.

In contrast, there are circumstances in which the self is profoundly threatened, in which it is attacked and discredited and its actual survival put to doubt. It is in those circumstances that Goffman shifts his stance and creates an eloquent and passionate assertion of the dignity and value of the self and a defense of its right to resist the social world even when, from the observer's point of view, it resists what may be for its own good. (Manning 1992) Goffman went further in his sociological research. In order to make performance successful, the individual should support his front in the active state, with the necessary stage props. Front is the combination of the abstract stereotypical expectations which make the audience prepared to the necessary performance. In this relation Goffman's contribution is in the essence of the notion of front. The dramatic realization of the reality assists the participants to fulfill everything what they intended to fulfill in the ongoing performance.

The implementation of the notion of the dramatic realization is another step of Goffman towards the creation of the deep theory of social interaction he was the first sociologist who used the previous knowledge not only for the development of the theoretic frames, but went further and explained the notion of the dramatic realization. Not only was this notion first introduced by him, but it has given the opportunity to explain many processes of social interaction through the use of this notion. For example, if the pupil tries to display his attention towards some lesson, he has no extra time for being really involved into what goes on during the lesson meaning that he does not have the time to listen to what the teacher tells being absorbed by his attempts to cerate an impressions of being attentive. The similar processes which take place in our lives and which need to be described through the social interaction notions would not be possible to describe without the use of the dramatic realization. The front acts as a vehicle of standardization, allowing for others to understand the individual on the basis of projected character traits that have normative meanings. As a collective representation, the front establishes proper setting, appearance, and manner for the social role assumed by the actor, uniting interactive behavior with the personal front. (Turner 1986) Dramatic realization is the means of showing the difference between what takes place in reality and what the participant of the situation wants to take place.

Action and expression are significantly different. Performances are not only considered in the dramatic prism, but are often idealized, that is they are framed and are represented in the best way to correspond to the norms of culture and different values accepted within the given society. According to Turner (1986), Goffman used as his normative section of the population what Gouldner termed as the "New Middle Class." Goffman has been criticised for general ising from his study of this particular class onto the whole of American society. Williams (1988) takes issue with this criticism and suggests that despite claims that Goffman is cynical, idiosyncratic and restricted to the Middle Class milieu, Goffman certainly indeed them to be general and in Williams' view also succeeded in doing so. Goffman traces what happens to an individual from the moment they enter a total institution. Goffman's definition of total institutions is very broad and open to criticism.

He includes in it nunneries, prisons, mental hospitals and army barracks as well as the Soviet labour camps and the Nazis concentration camps. It is the broadness of this definition, though, which allows Goffman to make use his findings to make the general observations about society which he does. (Manning 1992) Though Goffman has been criticized for many of his notions, and this may seem as the means of diminishing his contribution to the sociological theory of interaction; critically evaluating any notion, it is possible to see both negative and positive sides. It is evident, though that Goffman was the innovator of the social interaction' notions within the framework, which was called by him as 'dramaturgical. Though we have seen that several authors have tried to exercise this framework before him, but he was able to use the knowledge from his predecessors not only repeating and broadening it, but turning it into absolutely new theory which now serves as one of the basic theories of social interaction for the simplicity of its metaphors and comparisons which give the insight into the processes of social interaction as such even for the person who does not specialize in sociology. Conclusion Goffman's ideas take important place in the modern theoretical sociology. Goffman's concept is the response to the ideas of several sociologists, among which were Bloomer and Durkheim, as well as the unity of frame's continuum's and symbolic interactions.

Despite the fact that the peculiarity of Goffman's vocabulary could potentially turn his theory into the one which would never be applied in practice and would be mentioned only in the number of theoretical courses of sociology, we here observe an opposite picture; Goffman's contribution is made through having kept close connection with the previous sociological tradition and building a perspective version of micro sociology on the basis of synthesis between 'realistic' and 'understanding' approaches. References Goffman, E 1974, Frame analysis: An essay in the organization of experience, Harper & Row, New York. Manning, P 1992, Erving Goffman and modern sociology, Polity Press, London. Turner, J 1986, The structure of sociological theory, Wardworth Publishing Company, Belmont. Williams, R 1988, Understanding Goffman's methods, Polity Press, Cambridge.


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Research essay sample on Theory Of Social Social Interaction

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