What does it mean to be a human?

HSS 101 Oct 1, 2007 Week 9

Symbolic interaction and the construction of reality

Symbolic interactionism, we constantly interpret what the symbols mean or what they ought to when we interact with others. This paradigm is closely related to Weber.

Definition of Situation. W.I Thomas (1928): if men define situation as real, then they are real in their consequences. People’s interpretation towards a situation will determine how they react and behave. Because the different people have different social statue, training, and experience, their perspective to the same objects will be different. Human behavior is less defined by objective facts but on how people define the situation.

The situation is not real, it is because men define them to be real and it is their response /action to these situations which lead to certain consequence.

For example, voting in Singapore election, do people think the government knows who to vote? Will it influence the voting result?

In face to face interactions:

o People from impression of others and manage impressions of themselves at the same time
o The ability to create impression is the defining feature of human interaction.
o Social group membership (i.e. gender, age, social class, occupation, race, and ethnicity) suggests culturally defined expectations of behavior and values
o Observable characteristics (i.e. clothing, appearance) verbal and non verbal communications are all taken into account.

People use stereotypes to determine first impression; we form impressions of others through stereotyping. When we ask information about certain individual, we help us to define him/her by providing unspoken backgrounds of all interactions, by looking at clothing and cosmetics and how people manage their image.

Erving Goffman’s Theatrical Model of social life “The presentation of self in everyday life (1959)”

The self is social; he categorized the interaction process as “dramaturgy” is the study of social life as theatre, people in everyday life are like actors on the stage, putting on performances.

Performances; all the activities of an individual which occurs during a period marked by his continuous presence before a particular set of observers and which has some influence on the observers.

Audience- people who observe our behavior;
Roles- image being projected or attempted
Script- communication with others
Props- objects used to present image to convince audience of the performance that is carried out

Structural elements:-

Front stage- where appropriate appearance is maintained; people maintain proper image when interacting with others.
Back stage- where preparation for performance is made and where impression management can be relaxed, people fall out of characters.
Performance team- set of individuals who cooperate in staging a performance that leads an audience to form an impression of one or all team members to achieve positive public image. i.e. married couples are socially obligated to show a cooperative image, esp. when others do not know them well.

The arts of impression management

Defensive attributes and practices:-

- Dramaturgical loyalty, the performers are structurally prevented to become too sympathetic to the audience e.g. fast food owners cannot be too sympathetic to customers if they want to sell left over food.
- Dramaturgical discipline, management of individuals face and voice and ability to control are facial and verbal expression.
- Dramaturgical circumspection, select kind of audience that will give in limited trouble, limit site of audience, (e.g. easier to teach middle class kids, more conformative, than working or upper class.)

Protective practices:

- access to the back and front stages of a performance
- audience tact, outsiders tactfully act in an uninterested, uninvolved, unperceiving fashion
- The audience may come into tacit collusion.

Impression mismanagement

Spoiled identities- when we fall at impression management, we follow different tactics to re-establish order and regain our identities. It will be problematic and discredited.

Embarrassment, emotion when one experiences the identity one tries to represent is discredited.

Aligning action often used to restore order and repair a damaged identity, an apology or an explanation; to attempt to avoid impression mismanagement, people may offer a disclaimer. “Verbal assertion given before action to restore social order.”


Stigma- permanent identity spoilage, is a deeply discrediting characteristic
Goffman defined three types of stigma:-
- Physical
- Character related
- Related to social group membership, devalue in given social groups and community.

Stigma is socially constructed and various across time eg, obesity

Stigmatized interaction within people and their behavior expectation are often under mixed context, resulting in short interaction time, either side feed inhibited, and during interacting behaviors are rigid.

Background knowledge of other stigma people helps, however uncertainty causes uneasiness in interaction. Whether intention or not, non stigmatize individuals often cause stigmatize persons to conform, so that stigmatized persons will try to hide their stigma if they can. The social consequence for that type of interacting is short, and response often lies with non-stigmatized person.

To the question that how do people construct their own minds, conversation, behavior as view of social world?

Goffman, offers social interaction theory, suggests that sociologist should not only look into the social facts, (fact can be constructed in different ways), but more importantly, social construct behavior in social reality.

Harold Garfinkel, “ethnomethodologist” – the method of revelation through the dispute. “ refers to the investigation of the rational properties of indexical expressions and other practical actions as contingent ongoing accomplishment of organized artful practices of everyday life.”

He emphasizes the key thing is process, not outcome, though the outcome is always socially contracted. Unlike Durkheim, whose suicide research was based on government statistic data, Harold Garfinkel thinks it is mistake for social scientist to use government statistic data as given facts, they need to get their own and should also describe the process how to generate the social facts. Social construction of reality, refers to the process by which people shape reality through social interaction, from where social facts emerge.