Erving Goffman: dramaturgy and self

• A. A machine operating according to fixed mechanical laws
• B. A theatrical performance in which individuals play roles before audiences ✓
• C. A market in which people exchange goods and services
• D. A living organism whose parts each serve a biological function

Why: Goffman's dramaturgical approach treats everyday life as a stage: individuals perform roles for audiences, use props and settings, and sometimes work with teammates to sustain a particular impression.

• A. Backstage
• B. Front stage ✓
• C. Mortification
• D. Civil inattention

Why: The front stage is the part of a performance where the performer presents a defined situation to the audience, often through a personal front (appearance and manner) and a setting. Backstage is where the performer can relax and prepare.

• A. Role distance
• B. Face-work ✓
• C. Impression management by deception
• D. Total institution

Why: Face-work consists of the actions people take to maintain their own face and that of others during interaction. Goffman stresses that social order depends on participants cooperating to protect each other's face.

• A. The legal framework that governs contracts between strangers
• B. The realm of face-to-face social interaction, with its own rules and norms distinct from larger social institutions ✓
• C. The hierarchy of economic classes in industrial society
• D. The sequence of developmental stages in childhood socialization

Why: Goffman proposed the interaction order as a distinct domain of social life, the situated, co-present encounters where people orient to one another, with rules and dynamics that can be studied in their own right rather than reduced to macro-social structures.

• A. The formal greetings exchanged at the start of a public event
• B. Conduct in a setting where the performer can drop the front and prepare or relax, away from the audience ✓
• C. The rules enforced by employers on front-line service workers
• D. The behavior of audience members who heckle performers

Why: Backstage is the region where a performance is prepared and where the performer can step out of character. Behavior there may contradict the front-stage impression, which is why audiences are typically excluded.

• A. The private space where performers relax and drop their roles
• B. The social setting in which an individual performs for an audience ✓
• C. The backstage area where props and costumes are stored
• D. The formal legal boundary separating public and private property

Why: Goffman uses 'front stage' to describe the part of a performance where the individual presents themselves to an audience, following conventions and idealized expectations.

• A. The place where audiences gather to watch performances
• B. A region where the performer can drop the front and prepare or relax without the audience present ✓
• C. The public square where social norms are enforced
• D. The part of the self that remains hidden from everyone at all times

Why: The back stage is a region separate from the audience, where performers can step out of character, rehearse, and relax, often revealing the effort behind the front stage performance.

• A. Managing a company's financial reports for investors
• B. The ongoing effort individuals make to control the impressions others form of them ✓
• C. Training actors to memorize scripts for theatrical productions
• D. The process by which audiences forget a performer's mistakes

Why: Impression management refers to the strategies people use, often unconsciously, to shape how others perceive them during social interaction.

• A. A group of sports players who train together
• B. Any set of individuals who cooperate to present a particular definition of a situation ✓
• C. Professional actors hired for a single theatrical production
• D. A committee that assigns roles in a workplace

Why: A performance team is a set of people who collaborate in staging an interaction, maintaining a shared impression and keeping backstage secrets from the audience.

• A. It shows the audience that the performer has been rehearsing
• B. It reveals backstage behavior or information that contradicts the impression being presented ✓
• C. It causes the audience to leave the performance immediately
• D. It signals that the performer is switching to a new social role

Why: When backstage behavior leaks into the front stage, it can undermine the idealized impression the performer is trying to maintain, creating embarrassment or a loss of credibility.

• A. A scripted play staged in a theatre for an audience
• B. All the activity an individual engages in during a given occasion that serves to influence any of the other participants ✓
• C. The private thoughts a person has before entering social interaction
• D. A formal ritual performed only during religious or legal ceremonies

Why: Goffman defines a performance broadly as all the activity an individual undertakes during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers, which influences those observers in some way. It is not limited to theatre or formal rituals.

• A. The area where people relax and drop their guard
• B. The place where a performer presents themselves to an audience, typically following established expectations ✓
• C. The backstage area where props and costumes are stored
• D. The public record of a person's official credentials

Why: The front stage is the part of a performance that functions to define the situation for those observing it. It is where the performer presents an idealized or expected version of themselves to the audience.

• A. Front region
• B. Back region ✓
• C. Personal space
• D. Setting

Why: The back region (or backstage) is where the performance is prepared and where performers can drop their character. Keeping the audience out of this region is essential to maintaining the front stage impression.

• A. Managing a company's public image through advertising
• B. The techniques individuals use to control how others perceive them during social interaction ✓
• C. The process by which institutions record and archive personal information
• D. Teaching children to behave politely at school

Why: Impression management refers to the strategies people use to shape and control the impressions others form of them, such as selecting appearance, behavior, and setting to present a desired self.

• A. A group of actors hired to perform a single play
• B. Any set of individuals who cooperate in staging a single routine or performance together ✓
• C. A sports team that competes in public events
• D. Employees who are trained to greet customers in a store

Why: Goffman uses 'team' to describe any set of individuals who cooperate in presenting a particular routine. Team members must maintain loyalty and secrecy, such as hiding backstage errors from the audience.

• A. The physical features a person displays to others
• B. The positive social value a person claims for themselves through the line they take during an encounter ✓
• C. A person's private inner feelings that they conceal from others
• D. The formal title or social role assigned by an institution

Why: Goffman defines face as the positive social value a person effectively claims for themselves by the line others assume they have taken during a particular contact. It is situational and depends on the interaction rather than being a fixed trait.

• A. Impression management
• B. Facework ✓
• C. Role distance
• D. Framing

Why: Facework refers to the actions taken to counteract incidents that threaten face. It includes both defensive practices that protect one's own face and protective practices that preserve the face of others.

• A. Two strangers exchanging greetings before a conversation begins
• B. A person apologizing after accidentally spilling a drink on someone ✓
• C. Guests arriving at a dinner party in formal attire
• D. A cashier thanking a customer at the end of a transaction

Why: Corrective processes restore ritual equilibrium after a offense or threat to face. An apology after a spill is a classic example: the offender acknowledges the offense and the offended party accepts the apology, restoring social order.

• A. To maximize profit in commercial exchanges
• B. To prevent situations in which face-threatening acts might occur ✓
• C. To establish formal hierarchies within organizations
• D. To express romantic interest in another person

Why: Avoidance rituals are practices such as keeping a respectful distance or not intruding on another's private space. They protect face by preventing threatening encounters from arising in the first place.

• A. Face-saving acts are performed in private, while face-threatening acts occur in public
• B. Face-saving acts maintain or restore social worth, while face-threatening acts put someone's social worth at risk ✓
• C. Face-saving acts involve physical grooming, while face-threatening acts involve verbal insults only
• D. Face-saving acts are always deceptive, while face-threatening acts are always honest

Why: Face-saving acts help maintain or repair a person's positive social value, whereas face-threatening acts, such as criticism or embarrassing revelations, endanger it. Goffman's framework focuses on how interactants navigate this tension to keep the encounter smooth.

• A. A physical boundary that separates public and private spaces
• B. A schema of interpretation that allows individuals to make sense of what would otherwise be meaningless events ✓
• C. A formal legal rule that governs social interaction
• D. A personality trait that determines how people respond to stress

Why: Goffman defines frames as principles of organization that govern events and our subjective involvement in them. They are interpretive schemas that let people identify what is going on in a situation, making otherwise meaningless occurrences intelligible.

• A. Keying ✓
• B. Fabrication
• C. Impression management
• D. Degradation ceremony

Why: Keying is Goffman's term for a systematic transformation of an already meaningful activity into another framework, such as turning a fight into play-fighting or a real event into a rehearsal. Fabrication refers to deliberate deception, which he treats as a separate category.

• A. The front stage
• B. The back region ✓
• C. The audience segregation zone
• D. The civil inattention zone

Why: In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman distinguishes front regions, where performances occur for an audience, from back regions, where the performer can prepare and relax without maintaining the performance.

• A. The physical features that identify a person
• B. The positive social value a person claims for themselves through the line they take during an encounter ✓
• C. The emotional expression that a person displays involuntarily
• D. A person's official rank within an organization

Why: In Interaction Ritual and related essays, Goffman defines face as the positive social value a person effectively claims by the line others assume they have taken during a particular contact. Face is socially on loan and must be maintained through interaction.

• A. A person's deliberate attempt to deceive others for personal gain
• B. The ongoing process by which individuals express themselves and manage the impressions others form of them, much like actors on a stage ✓
• C. The formal introduction ritual at the beginning of a meeting
• D. A psychological disorder involving multiple identities

Why: Goffman's dramaturgical approach views social life as performance: individuals present themselves to audiences, manage impressions, and often cooperate with others to sustain a shared definition of the situation, without necessarily intending deception.

• A. Role distance
• B. Stigma ✓
• C. Impression management
• D. Front region

Why: Goffman uses 'stigma' to describe an attribute that significantly discredits a person's social identity, marking them as tainted or deviant. Role distance, impression management, and front region are concepts from his other works, such as 'The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.'

• A. Discredited stigma is hidden, while discreditable stigma is already visible to others
• B. Discredited stigma is already known or evident to others, while discreditable stigma is not immediately apparent and may be concealed ✓
• C. Discredited stigma applies only to physical disabilities, while discreditable stigma applies only to moral failings
• D. Discredited stigma can be removed through treatment, while discreditable stigma is permanent

Why: A discredited person's stigma is evident or already known, so they must manage the tension of the situation. A discreditable person's stigma is not perceived by others, so they must manage information, deciding whether, when, and how to disclose it.

• A. Successfully completing a social ritual without embarrassment
• B. Presenting oneself as normal so that others do not perceive one's stigma ✓
• C. Moving from one social class to another through education
• D. Gaining acceptance from a stigmatized group by adopting its norms

Why: Passing refers to the effort of a person with a discreditable stigma to conceal or minimize it so that they are accepted as normal by others. Goffman analyzes passing as one of several strategies for managing information about a spoiled identity.

• A. The own
• B. The wise ✓
• C. The normals
• D. The deviants

Why: Goffman calls these individuals 'the wise,' meaning those who understand the stigmatized person's situation and are accepted as insiders. 'The own' refers to fellow members of the stigmatized group, while 'the normals' are those without the stigma.

• A. A career path restricted to members of religious institutions
• B. The sequence of changes in a person's self-conception and identity as they move through a stigmatized status ✓
• C. The professional advancement of individuals who report ethical violations
• D. A lifelong pattern of conforming to societal moral codes without deviation

Why: Goffman uses 'moral career' to describe how a person's self-image and relationship to others develop over time as they acquire, learn about, and adjust to a stigmatized identity. It captures the internal and social stages of this process.

• A. The private space where individuals drop their guard and rehearse performances
• B. The social setting where individuals perform for an audience, following expected roles and scripts ✓
• C. The institutional authority that enforces social rules on individuals
• D. The inner psychological self that exists independently of social interaction

Why: Goffman used 'front stage' to describe settings where people perform roles before an audience. Its counterpart, the 'back stage,' is where performers relax and prepare, away from observers.

• A. Closed system
• B. Total institution ✓
• C. Bureaucratic order
• D. Corporate household

Why: In Asylums (1961), Goffman defined total institutions as places where people are cut off from wider society and where all aspects of life, such as sleeping, working, and eating, occur under one authority.

• A. A voluntary process of spiritual self-reflection undertaken by religious inmates
• B. The process by which institutional routines strip away an inmate's prior identity and self-conceptions ✓
• C. The physical punishment used to discipline rule-breaking inmates
• D. The depression that commonly develops among long-term residents of institutions

Why: Goffman described mortification as the systematic stripping of identity through practices like removing personal belongings, assigning uniforms, and imposing degrading procedures, which undermines the self the inmate brought in.

• A. An inmate's formal promotion to a trusted position within the institution
• B. An unofficial behavior that allows a person to get around the rules or avoid the demands of the institution ✓
• C. A required procedure for transferring an inmate to a different facility
• D. The official rehabilitation program designed to prepare inmates for release

Why: Secondary adjustments are informal, often covert practices that let inmates evade institutional expectations, such as hiding privileges or bending rules, and they help preserve a sense of self.

• A. The formal training that employees receive to represent their organization
• B. The conscious and unconscious efforts individuals make to control how others perceive them ✓
• C. The institution's attempt to create a favorable public image
• D. The rating system used to evaluate individuals in social settings

Why: Impression management, central to The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, refers to the strategies people use to shape the impressions others form of them, through both deliberate and habitual performance.