The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Citation

Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor Books. (First published in Scotland, 1956.)

Chapter Summary

Context and Argument

Goffman's first book treats face-to-face interaction as a subject for sociology in its own right. Its organising idea is the theatre: in everyday encounters people present themselves and their activity to others, try to guide the impressions others form of them, and use recognisable techniques to sustain the performance, much as actors present a character to an audience. The book develops a vocabulary for these techniques (performance, team, region, front and back, discrepant role) and tests it against observations of social life. The 1959 American edition followed a version published in Scotland in 1956. Goffman had lived on one of the Shetland Isles while gathering material for his dissertation, and Shetland crofters, kitchens, servants, hospitals and filling stations are among the settings that recur in the book.

Introduction

The introduction sets up the problem the rest of the book develops. When people come into contact, each tries to guide the impression the others form, while the others try to obtain information about them. A recurring theme is the shared "definition of the situation" that keeps an interaction coherent; when it is discredited, participants may pretend nothing has happened to keep the peace.

Chapter 1: Performances

The first chapter, about sixty pages in the Anchor edition, defines a performance and examines its elements. Its sections treat the performer's belief in the part being played, dramatic realization, idealization, the coherence and control of expression, misrepresentation, mystification, and the relation between reality and contrivance. A central element is the "front" of a performance, which includes the setting, the performer's appearance and manner.

Chapter 2: Teams

Many performances are given not by individuals but by teams who cooperate to sustain a single definition of the situation. Teammates form bonds of collegiality based on their shared commitment to the performance.

Chapter 3: Regions and Region Behavior

Performances take place in bounded regions. In the front region the performance is given. In the back region, shielded from the audience, performers can prepare for their role or set it aside.

Chapter 4: Discrepant Roles

Some people have access to information or places that do not match their apparent role. Examples include the informer, who betrays a team's secrets, the shill, who poses as an audience member while working for the performers, and the "non-person", such as a servant, who is treated as absent and so witnesses both regions.

Chapter 5: Communication Out of Character

Performers sometimes step out of their official roles. The chapter treats the handling of the absent (including derogation of the audience behind its back), "staging talk" about past and future performances, collusion among teammates, and realigning actions.

Chapter 6: The Arts of Impression Management

Goffman examines how performances are protected against disruption. He covers the defensive attributes and practices of performers, the protective practices by which audiences and outsiders help to save a performance, for instance by pretending not to notice a slip, and tact regarding tact.

Chapter 7: Conclusion

The conclusion restates the conceptual framework and sets the analysis in a wider context. Its sections relate personality, interaction and society, consider comparative study, and end with the role of expression in conveying impressions of self and with staging and the self.

Key Concepts

• Definition of the situation: the working agreement that participants sustain about what is going on in an encounter.
• Impression management: the techniques by which people guide and control the impressions others form of them.
• Performance and front: activity before an audience, and the expressive equipment (setting, appearance, manner) that supports it.
• Idealization and misrepresentation: presenting an activity in line with accepted values, and the risk that a performance is false or discredited.
• Team: a set of people who cooperate in staging a single performance and share its secrets.
• Front region and back region: where the performance is given, and where performers drop or prepare it.
• Discrepant roles: positions such as informer, shill and non-person that cut across the performer–audience line.
• Communication out of character: talk and action in which performers step outside their official roles.
• Tact: the cooperation of audiences and outsiders in protecting other people's performances.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• One sustained framework. The book builds a single conceptual system from the theatrical metaphor and applies it across the chapters, so each concept prepares the next: performances are given by teams, in regions, and are threatened by discrepant roles and out-of-character communication.
• Attention to ordinary interaction. The French publisher's description stresses that Goffman takes seriously fleeting encounters and small exchanges that conventional sociology had left aside, and aims at an ethnography of everyday life.
• Concepts that travel. The vocabulary of front and back regions, teams and impression management applies equally to workplaces, institutions and service encounters. The book received the American Sociological Association's MacIver Award in 1961.
• A conclusion that steps back. The final chapter restates the conceptual scheme and relates it to personality, society and comparative study, which helps readers see the framework as a whole.

Limitations

• Mid-century settings. The material dates from the 1950s, and its examples of service work, domestic servants and hospital routines need historical context.
• A lens, not a media theory. The book analyses face-to-face encounters. It offers no account of mass media or digital platforms, so in a media course readers have to do the work of extending its concepts themselves.
• Gendered language. The text and its publisher's description use "himself" and "him" for the generic individual, as was usual at the time.

Where It Fits in the Course

This course is mostly about media, and this book is the one study of face-to-face interaction on the list. Its value is as a foundation: the concepts of performance, audience, front and back regions underpin later work on how people present themselves through media, including online. Croteau, Hoynes and Childress's Media/Society and Pollard and McDougall's Media Studies: The Basics are the introductory surveys of media and society, and McQuail's Media and Mass Communication Theory is a comprehensive reference on media theory. Goffman supplies a micro-level vocabulary that these surveys can be tested against. The site's page for Christian Fuchs's Social Media: A Critical Introduction suggests reading Goffman alongside discussions of online self-presentation. Couldry and Hepp's The Mediated Construction of Reality asks, at the level of theory, how media shape everyday social reality, and makes a natural next step after Goffman's analysis of unmediated encounters.

How to Use This Book

No prior sociology is required; the book is written in plain prose, but it is dense with distinctions, so read it slowly. Start with the Introduction and Chapter 1, which carry the core concepts, then read Chapters 2 and 3 together, since teams and regions depend on each other. Chapters 4–6 refine the framework through special cases and can be read more quickly, with most attention to Chapter 6 on impression management and tact. Read the Conclusion in full, because it pulls the concepts together.

Alongside the reading, choose one ordinary setting, such as a café, a seminar or a group chat, and map it with the book's terms: who performs, who forms the audience and the team, where the front and back regions lie, and how disruptions are repaired. For a media course, repeat the exercise for an online profile or platform and note which concepts transfer cleanly and which need adjustment.