PRAME ANALYSIS An Essay on the Organization of Experience Erving Goffman Harvard University Press Cambridge, MassachusettsHM C503 N25508 AUG 8 19/7 BOSTON COLLEGE SCHOOL OF NURSING LIBRARY Copyright © 1974 by Erving Goffman All rights reserved. Second printing 1975 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 74-4644 ISBN: 0-674-31656-8 Printed in the United States of America BEAD Bg APR 5 19776) The Theatrical Frame Because the language of the theater has become deeply em- bedded in the sociology from which this study derives, there is value in attempting from the start to address the matter of the stage. There is value, too, because all kinds of embarrassments are to be found. All the word is like a stage, we do strut and fret our hour on it, and that is all the time we have. But what's the stage like, and what are those figures that people it? I A performance, in the restricted sense in which I shall now use the term, is that arrangement which transforms an individual into a stage performer, the latter, in turn, being an object that can be looked at in the round and at length without offense, and looked to for engaging behavior, by persons in an “audience” role.’ (It is contrariwise the obligation to show visual respect which characterizes the frame of ordinary face-to-face interac- tion.) A line is ordinarily maintained between a staging area where the performance proper occurs and an audience region 1. A different definition of performance is recommended in Dell Hymes, “Toward Linguistic Competence” (unpublished paper, 1973): “And there is a sense in which performance is an attribute of any behavior, if the doer accepts or has imputed to him responsibility for being evaluated in regard to it.” 124