Blumer and symbolic interactionism: He propos es 3 fundamental premises.

(1) “Human
beings act as toward things on the basis of the meanings which theses things have for them”.
Meanings are not intrinsically in things in the world; they have to be defined before they have
any human reality. This applies to other human beings, social organizations, to ideals, as well
as physical objects themselves. Everything that people act upon or that has an impact upon
them must go through the process of subjective meaning. (2)”The meaning of a thing for a
person grows out of the ways in which other persons act toward the person with regard to the
thing” Meaning is not merely individual and subjective, but social. (3) “The use of meanings
by the actor occurs through a process of interpretation”. Meanings are handled flexibly as
actions are worked out. The social communication which constitutes meaning is itself an
interpretive process, as individuals imaginatively take the role of the other to work out of way
of dealing with each other. People are not merely pushed around by psychological or social
conditions. Each individual has to interpret whatever factors there are in the situation, to give
them a meaning, to work out a course of action in regard to them. Society, roles, social
institutions, or values should not be reified, as if they were objective things or autonomous
forces impinging on the individual. Society exists only in action; it is whatever people work it
out to be, at a particular moment in time. Schutz proposes features which are fundamental
aspects of the consciousness of everyday life. (1)Reciprocity of perspectives. Each person
makes certain assumptions about the world, assumes that anyone else who is there is making
the same thing. If they were to switch positions, presumably each one would see the world as
the other did. (2) Objectivity and undeceptiveness of appearances. A person assumes
that world is what it appears to be, and that it is factual and objective, not sth that has been
subjectively manufactured. Doubt is suspended. (3) Typification. The kinds of things that
happen in one situation are taken as instances of the kinds of things that have happened
before and that will happen again in the future. (4) Practicality and goal-directedness. People
experience a situation as sth they are doing, a project they are working toward in the world;
their sense of their self as working toward a goal is experienced as their total self. (5) Stock of
commonsense knowledge. People interpret their situation by using a stock of symbols, such
as the words in the language, and other cultural knowledge. This knowledge is socially based
and is assumed to be obvious to everyone. Harold Garfinkel describes ethnomethodology
as the study of procedures people use to remedy the indexical nature of social life. People do
not confront the indexicality; they avoid it, and thereby sustain the sense that all is as it
should be. Here are some of these procedures: (1) The et cetra ssumption. People
commonly refer to things in their world, or actions they or someone else take, by a short-hand
mode of expression. To this is implicitly or explicitly added the proviso that “I could go on in
greater detail along this line.” People take this ability to provide the “et cetra” for granted,
although in fact no one ever does. The fact of indexicality shows why they never do.
Garfinkel’s breaching experiments in which people took things literally in a conversation
shows how upset people become if the et cetra assumption is not allowed to operate. (2)
Waiting for clarification. People don’t insist that everything should be clearly understood at
the moment they hear or see it. Generally they will wait to see whether what is said later
casts light on what went before to make it meaningful. Garfinkel dramatizes this by an
experiment in which students were told they were testing a new method of psychological
counseling. They were to ask a series of questions about some personal problem which could
be answered YES or NO, by a counselor in the next room. Actually the “counselor” was an
experimenter who was merely giving random yes and no answers without regard to their
questions. In effect, the students were given meaningless answers to such issues as whether
they should drop out of school, what career to pursue, whether to get married, and so forth.
Grafinkel found that even the answers seemed bizarre, the subjects tended to accept them as
meaningful, waiting for further clarification in later answers and reinterpreting what was
presumably meant by earlier answers in the light of the way they interpreted the later
answers. Grafinkel also reports that the subjects, when informed at the end of the experiment
that the answers they received were meaningless, were profoundly shocked. They had
constructed a coherent view of the world from this information, and it was very unsettling for
them to give up the basic assumption that a meaningful reality could be constructed by the
methods of commonsense reasoning they were using. (3) Offering accounts. When sth
happens that people genuinely do not expect or can’t make sense of they quickly move to
rectify their sense of disturbed reality. They offer “accounts”, excuses that others accept as
putting their sense of reality back into order. They offer an apology or an explanation: they
were not paying attention, didn’t know what they were saying, didn’t mean to do it, or even
were deliberately lying or playing a trick. People find making cognitive amends of this sort
very important; it turns a meaningless world back into a meaningful one and restores the
sense of normalcy. We might also say that it shields people from realizing the indexicality that
underlines everything they do. Even if there was no good reason for the other person to do or
say what they did, it makes things right that they now have come back to normalcy and are
claiming to offer an excuse. People want each other to give obeisance to their belief in a
common reality. For criminals to admit that they were “temporarily insane” or that they had
“make a mistake”, “done the wrong thing” is important for all of us because it restores a
sense that everyone now is acknowledging what is normal; and this becomes more important
than what was actually done. Erving Goffman’s primary framework consist of: ® The
natural world of physical objects in which people live, including their own bodies. ® The social
world of other people and their networks of relationships. TRANSFORMATIONS – A strip of
activity in these primary frameworks can be transformed in numerous ways. “Keys and
Keyings” are ways that people perform a strip activity, but in such a way that is taken at more
than face value. These include: ®Make-believe: a theatrical performance, children imagining
etc. ®Contests: special activities that one performs for the sake of an athletic event, a board
game, a bet etc. ®Ceremonials: weddings, birthday celebrations, church services, and all the
other special bits of behavior which are enacted for their symbolic significance. ® Technical
redoings: here Goffman refers to actions people perform so that the activity itself can be tried
out, practiced, or observed, without being seriously committed to it. Examples are practices
(for a play, for a game, for a ceremony); exhibitions, psychotherapy, in which past events are
recapitulated; and experiments. ®Other, more complicated and arcane “keyings” of ordinary
activities that can occur.

Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Our Understanding of the Idea of Self
Erving Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life forwards an enlightening slant on how we present
ourselves to others and self-comprehension.

Erving Goffman`s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life provides an interesting slant on communication.
The approach Goffman employs is "dramaturgical approach" which aids him in presenting his ideas on
viewing the self within the social context (1959, 240). Interaction is called "performance," influenced by
both environment and audience. In the process, the actors impart "impressions" that are in harmony with the
actor’s intentions (17).

Communication and Self

The book’s main premise is that social interaction is at the heart of communication. Goffman uses actors
as symbols of individuals and performances as the impressions we make to others. People, according to him,
are social actors and we have the ability to choose our stage and props, as well as the “costume” or front we
put before a specific audience. As actors, our primary goal is to be coherent and adapt to different situations.

The actor hyperbole, even if quite limited, provides new insight into the features of social interaction and the
psychology of the individual. According to Goffman, establishing social identity is largely based on the idea
of putting up a "front," or "that part of the individual's performance which regularly functions in a general
and fixed fashion to define the situation for those who observe the performance" (22).

Everyone of us is consciously always playing a role on a daily basis. We are always presenting a personal
front which is either behavioral and material such as in our manner of dressing, our posture, hair, make-up
and gestures. As performers we want to create the most positive impression possible to the point of being
ideal. A slight error can disrupt our performance. The performer may sometimes act to hide this error or
misguide the audience which may lead to self-deception.

Normally, the individual uses his activity to be able to convey an impression to others which will advance
his interests. This process is what we termed as impression management and it occurs in practically every
social interaction. Each participant has to suppress his feelings to convey a view of the situation which
others will find acceptable.

This is called "dramatic realization" (30), based on activities of "impression management" or how the person
comes across to the other, the control or lack thereof and transfer of information through the person’s
performance (208). Believability, as a result, is constructed in terms of verbal signification, which is used by
the actor to establish intent, and non-verbal signification, which is used by the audience to verify the honesty
of statements made by the individual.

Attempts are made to present an "idealized" version of the front, more consistent with the norms, mores, and
laws of society than the behavior of the actor when not before an audience (35). Information dealing with
aberrant behavior and belief is concealed from the audience in a process of "mystification," making
prominent those characteristics that are socially sanctioned, legitimating both the social role of the
individual and the framework to which the role belongs (67).

Maintaining a front is important for the team in order to minimize conflicts. This holds true in any situation
in our lives particularly in the workplace, where each of us assumes a front, conforming to the workplace’s
acceptable standards in order to prevent unwarranted conflicts with our co-workers