Dramaturgy

‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts’

(William Shakespeare, 1599) In his book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1971), Erving Goffman describes everyday interactions as a ‘performance’, involving actors, or people, in which they put on an act. He describes two extremes, sincere and cynical. A sincere act occurs when a performer is fully convinced into believing his or her own act- ‘the reality staged is the real reality’ (Goffman, 1971). A cynical act occurs when the performer has ‘no belief in his own act and no ultimate concerns with the beliefs of his audience’ (Goffman, 1971), this cynicism may be spiteful, for example, pretending to be nice to someone you dislike, or in the best interest of the other actors in the ‘scene’, for example, pretending to like that hideous jumper your great aunt knitted for you so you don’t hurt her feelings! In a face to face interaction, it is a lot easier to judge if someone is being sincere or cynical, by looking at body language or other cues. Goffman discusses front and back stage performances. Front stage means the area where the actor ‘formally performs and adheres to conventions that have meaning to the audience’ (1971). Back stage is where performers are present but audience is not, and the performers can step out of character without disrupting the performance (Leporc, 2011). An interesting journal article I found discussed undercover detectives in a dramaturgical framework. I found it funny, because the author, Bruce Jacobs, states his interest in the topic came about from a few ‘minor brushes with the law over drug use’ (1992). Busted! He describes four areas of deception related to dramaturgy- rehearsal (of the deal), which took place in the back stage; manipulating appearance, which was a back stage preparation for a front stage performance; verbal diversion, where the agent would distract the dealer from the centrality of the drug deal by talking about a non-related topic, also a front stage performance; and finally, physical diversion, which is also front stage, and involves body language manipulation, for example, the detective pretending to look around anxiously as a drug buyer might do. This would of course be a cynical performance, but Jacobs talked of ‘light’ and ‘deep’ cover detectives- those in deep cover were so immersed in the job that they sometimes changed their whole life to go deep undercover, and I have to wonder if they would start to believe their own performance? References Goffman, E 1971, ‘Performances’, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Harmondsworth, Penguin, pp28-82 Jacobs, B 1992, ‘Undercover Deception: Reconsidering Presentations of Self’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, vol. 21, pp 200-225. Leporc, A 2011, ‘Interpretation of Erving Goffman’s Dramaturgical Theory in Relation to the ‘Online Stage’ and Facebook’, accessed 28/9/12, http://antoineleporc.com/interpretation-erving-goffman’s-dramaturgical-theory-relation-“online-stage”-facebook/

Comment #1

This comment was on Karishma's blog post for week 9 http://bhandarykarishma.blogspot.com.au/2012/09/bloody-australian-culture.html?showComment=1348827268655

Why The Bloody Hell Were They Offended? (Week 9)

This weeks reading was ‘Australian cultural scripts- bloody revisited’, by Anna Wierzbicka, and it concerned the use of the word ‘bloody’ in Australian speech discourse. Bloody as an adjective has been a part of Australian speech for a long time, since the 1890’s in fact, when weekly magazine of the time, The Bulletin labelled it ‘the great Australian adjective’ (Ludowyk, 2002). But why the bloody hell do some people find it offensive? You can be sure I don’t mean any bloody Aussie when I say that! But the English do find it offensive. So offensive, in fact, that in 2001 they banned an Australian tourism ad featuring Lara Bingle, that asked the question- ‘So where the bloody hell are you?’ (Hong, 2008). The $180 million campaign was swiftly banned in the UK because ‘bloody hell’ was deemed an offensive term. But in Australia, it’s not an offensive term. It wasn’t meant to offend anyone by being used in the tourism ad, least of all the English! ‘Bloody’ is used as a sort of intensifier of what is being said, for example, ‘I just kicked my bloody toe!’. Wierzbicka (2002) identifies two meanings to the word ‘bloody’, depending on if they are used adjectively or adverbially. The Australian National Dictionary (2008) describes the difference as being the adjectival use associated with with negative feelings, while the adverbial use is not necessarily associated with bad feelings. While ‘bloody’ may be considered to be impolite in other countries, in Australia it is a part of Australian culture and speech discourse. Therefore, it should be viewed as one of the common and casual phrases used in everyday life (Hong, 2008). References Australian National Dictionary, 2008, http://australiannationaldictionary.com.au/index.php Hong, M, 2008, ‘Bloody hell and (im)politeness in Australian English’, Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication, vol. 1, no.1, pp 33-39 Ludowyk, F 2002, ‘The Anatomy of Swearing’, accessed 14/9/12, http://andc.anu.edu.au/ozwords/April%202001/Swearing.html Wierzbicka, A 2002, ‘Australian cultural scripts- bloody revisited’, Journal of Pragmatics, v34, pp1167-1209

Australian cultural scripts: 'bloody' revisited, Ann Guballa and Rachael Roby, Thursday 3.30pm tutorial.

Australian cultural scripts: 'bloody' revisited, Ann Guballa and Rachael Roby, Thursday 3.30pm tutorial. from rachael_roby

Data Set Link, SOC250 Presentation

Here is a link to the data set I will be presenting on, a blog post titled 'Sabotaging Slutwalk, Like a Man'. The author is Jason Sutherland, he writes on a blog called 'Intentious'

http://intentious.com/2012/08/27/sabotaging-slutwalk-like-a-man/

I will be looking at the initial post, then the comments beneath to establish two distinct sides to the post- agreeing and disagreeing with Jason. As there are over 60 comments, I will be selecting the ones I see as most relevant to analysis.

Ethnomethodology, Week 7

When I first read the word ‘ethnomethodology’, I cursed Sociology and its fondness for using words I don’t understand! But after a little more investigation, I learned that it’s just a fancy-pants word for studying everyday human interaction. Ethnomethodology is a term coined by Harold Garfinkel in 1967, this method of research seeks to highlight how social order is achieved by the ‘interaction of people, rather than social order being the framework within which action takes place’. In other words, people define social order, there is not a rigid set of rules that define our behaviour, rather, we are  continually defining and redefining these unwritten rules via our interactions with others at a micro level.

So what does this mean in terms people can actually understand? ‘Many people engage in a small degree of ethnomethodology every day, even though they aren't aware of it; for example, a parent explaining a concept to a child usually thinks about the way in which the child approaches the world and processes information to put the concept in terms the child will understand’ (wisegeek, 2012). Ethnomethodologists seek to make 'generalized claims about the nature of social interaction based upon specific research, itself driven by particular theoretical motivations' (Ethnomethodology, 2012).

Two important theorists studying different aspects of social action and organisation that influenced Garfinkel were Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schultz (Heritage, 1984). Parsons developed the 'action theory', which focused on attempting to create a unified theory of social action for the social sciences (Social Theory Re-wired, 2011). Schultz argued that Sociologists should study common sense beliefs and actions. Garfinkel then drew on this and other research to propose that social reality and social facts are constructed, produced and organised through the mundane actions and circumstances of everyday life, and he wanted to explore how people accomplish, establish, produce and reproduce a sense of social structure (Cohen & Crabtree, 2006).

It was a confusing topic, but I think the point is that there are expected patterns of behaviour in day to day life- when these patterns are broken, Garfinkel called it 'breaching', then there is confusion from other actors in society we interact with. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to be bad-ass and face the back in an elevator, and watch everyone get all creeped out!

References:

Cohen, D & Crabtree, B 2006, 'Qualitative Research Guidelines Project', accessed 8/9/12, http://www.qualres.org/HomePhen-3590.html

'Ethnomethodology', accessed 9/9/12, http://www.sagepub.com/david/Chapter_Ethnomethodology.pdf

Heritage, J 1984, 'The Morality of Cognition', pp75-102, in Garfinkel and Ethnomethodology, Cambridge, Polity Press.

Social Theory Re-wired, 2011, 'Ethnomethodology', accessed 8/9/12, http://theory.routledgesoc.com/category/profile-tags/ethnomethodology

Wisegeek, 2012, 'What is Ethnomethodology?', accessed 9/9/12, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-ethnomethodology.htm