Erving Goffman. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NJ:
Doubleday.
According to this “dramaturgical” understanding of social interaction, people form teams that
collude in managing audiences’ impressions of their staged performances. All participants’
motivations are toward maintaining the definition of their common situation. Actors rehearse
their performances backstage, and audiences tactfully overlook faux pas occasionally perceived
in the front region. Yet when referring to those rare moments when a persona—or self—has
been discredited, Goffman emphasizes that nothing is being said about anyone’s character (i.e.,
about what Parsons referred to as one’s personality system). Instead, successful roleperformances yield selves that are sensory “products of a scene that come off.”