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Erving Goffman's Theory Of Face To Face

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The sociologist Erving Goffman introduced the notion of face into social interaction with his article On Face-work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements of Social Interaction (1955) and book Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior (1967). His notion of face has been acknowledged as an inspiration to many politeness approaches. Face is considered a key factor that affects human interaction. Agassi and Jarvie (1969:140) believed that people are human "because they have face to care for – without it they lose human dignity". Despite its importance, there is no consensus among researchers on how we should define face. Moreover, the definition of face has been widely debated. I intend to discuss the most salient issues related to the concept of face as it applies to the study of politeness. Goffman’s version of Face Goffman (1967:5) defined face as being: The positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact. Face is an image of self delineated in terms of approved social attributes – albeit an …show more content…

Goffman believed that speakers maintain face through face-work, which is “actions taken by a person to make whatever he is doing consistent with face. Face-work serves to counteract incidents” (Goffman, 1967: 12). In other words, when an action threatens face, the speaker uses face saving practices to balance his embarrassment and hence the embarrassment that he and others might have over his embarrassment. These face saving practices often become habitual and standardized; each person, group, and society have their own repertoire of practices. Interactants make their selection of possible practices, but it does not mean that they are identical for every individual, group, or society. According to Goffman 's perspective, face is thus a mask that changes depending on the audience and the context of social

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Barbara Ehrenreich describes to us what she believes today’s world thinks about the definition of civility. Her purpose is to argue about the misconception of civility. She believes that “competitive gratitude” is not what having etiquette is about and that it is absolutely absurd to be forced into fake politeness. Ehrenreich uses satire and irony to clearly differentiate between civility and unnecessary flattery. In her second sentence, Ehrenreich uses the oxymoron “heck-no” and “with all due respect” together to mock the critics that claim that America needs a little more civility.

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He wants people to avoid thinking that developing only one true self identity is healthy. A mask allows an individual to see his or her full potential by not having a true identity. Masks have multiple identities based on the certain situations and environments (circumstances) the person is having(undergoing). I agree with Gergens interpretation (assertion) and his psychological

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The Transition of Civility In today’s commercial age, many of us have experienced awkwardness in the conversations with service workers. In “The Civility Glut”, Barbara Ehrenreich addresses the issue of excessive formality and politeness within day to day communications in America. She begins with examples of the so called “civility glut” in the popular media and her personal life, then gives background information explaining why this is happening. Her transition in rhetorical approach from comedic narrative to thoughtful definition has played an important role in directing reader’s attention and opinion.

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538 Words | 3 Pages

Goffman’s idea presents that people are dramatic in nature, in that they have a front stage and a back stage. When people present themselves to others, the front stage is how people want to presented and viewed by others.. The back stage refers to the natural personality of individuals, when they are representing themselves without any pretense. The story creates situations that highlight how interactions “bump” back stage struggles. In the book, Tash criticized others for missing people or not seeing what was really going on in a situation, while she herself did not see the back stage struggles her roommate was

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887 Words | 4 Pages

Many people don’t have much value for themselves. This is may be because in this age technology is so readily available. We have a stronger opportunity to compare ourselves. A strong example is Cyrano De Bergerac, the head-strong protagonist from Edmond Rostand 's Cyrano De Bergerac, Cyrano is portrayed to be the mighty swashbuckler, he secretly possesses major doubts about his outward appearance. A reader can infer that, although his muzzle might be robust, he finds it makes for a great distraction from his glorious self.

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Only others can see what they look like, they exist only for others. Ayn Rand dramatizes the importance of individualism by saying in a society of collectivism, it’s a sin to know what your face and body looks like.

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Many people believe that the face provides information about a person's life and

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687 Words | 3 Pages

Regardless of his particular objective, the actor must focus on giving off the expression that will make the impression he wants on others. He uses the example of Preedy to explain this idea. Because he knew people were watching, Preedy acted a certain way so others would see him as he wanted. In other words, he adopted a social face. According to Goffman, adopting a social face is necessary in a social situation if you want to make a good impression.

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Therefore, the standard table manners were completely ignored in my misuse of the utensils. In addition to Garfinkel's concept of ethnomethodology, this breaking of a social norm experiment can be analyzed in terms of Erving Goffman’s impression management. Goffman says that people are very much concerned with two types of the presentation of self, verbal and nonverbal communication. Also, people try desperately to manage how they are presented in society in order to control what people think of them and their roles in certain social situations. In regard to my experiment, I tried to give the impression of normal behavior so I would not draw attention to myself.

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This theory was made by Michael Argyle (1925- 2002), who was a social psychologist. In the late 1960s he studied social skills, body language, non-verbal communication and interpersonal behaviour. In this study, he found that non-verbal signals can be much more important and useful than verbal communication when trying to trigger peoples’ attitudes and feelings. His research showed and found that the stronger the relationship between the people communicating so with close friends for example the much better eye contact. However, when the relationship is not very strong so when speaking to a stranger people don’t have very good eye contact and they tend to look away when talking.

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"Positive Face" is what we can call to be accepted and to be appreciated by the other. It is also the want to be desirable by others and to have a good impression.(Yule,1996,P61).Moreover, to Brown & Levinson (1987), positive self-image is the wants of participants to be liked by others members(P.312) 1.4.4 Power in Discourse Power in Discourse exposes the inequality between participants. It may be called "unequal encounter ".The function of power in discourse is to highlight that the participants who have the power control the powerful participants.

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1081 Words | 5 Pages

A low-context culture “uses language primarily to express thoughts, feelings, and ideas as clearly and logically as possible… The meaning of a statement is in the works spoken (Adler & Elmhorst,2008,p.47). A high-context culture, on the other hand “relies heavily on subtle, often nonverbal cues to convey meaning, save face, and maintain social harmony”.(p.47). James Carter’s straight-talking style proves for low-context culture. He always wants to get to the point in a quick way by asking direct questions.

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1690 Words | 7 Pages

Erving Goffman published the ‘Presentation of Self in 1959 (Crossman, 2015). In this book, it is here he describes his theory about how we as people operate in our everyday lives and how we work to achieve a certain perception of ourselves. Goffman used the metaphor of the theatre to illustrate how we as social actors change our behaviour according to the audience that is present (Vogt Isaksen, 2015). Elements of the theatre can be used to demonstrate how we play our roles and how we change character in certain social situations. Also how we use various ‘props’ to

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1093 Words | 5 Pages

The two key topics in class in the last weeks, for me. Two of the most relevant topics developed in the last weeks were: non-verbal communication and the barriers to communication. Everytime we communicate with another person or group of people, we have to take into account some factors other than what we are actually saying that can affect how the message is going to be received: body language, tone, intonation, facial expressions, and others; this is what we understand for non-verbal communication. As we saw in class “55% of communication is body language, 38% is the tone of voice, and 7% is the actual words spoken.”

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1136 Words | 5 Pages

Introduction: The process of communicating successfully with our family, friends, co-workers, business associates and people is one of the most critical skills. Communication is such a key part of life that I often tell to a person that “Its no use of someone if he/she really don’t know by associates people in their work place or area of field”. Communication makes us to be known of others, good or bad that depends on usability of a person communication. And, it is up to each of us to learn to communicate well with those who are important to us.

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