THE PRESENTATION OF SELF
1
IN
EVERYDAY LIFE
ERVING GOFFMAN
University of Edinburgh
Social Sciences Research Centre
Price : Ten Shillings
THE PRESENTATION OF SELF
IN
EVERYDAY LIFE
ERVING GOFFMAN
University of Edinburgh
Social Sciences Research Centre
$9 George Square, Edinburgh S
Monograph No. 2
1956
o
M asks are arrested ex p ressio n s and admirable echoes of
feeling, at once faithful, discreet, and superlative. Living
th ings in contact with the air must acquire a cuticle, and it is
not urged against cu ticles that they are not h ea rts; yet some
philosophers seem to be angry with im ages for not being things,
and with words for not being feelings. Words and images are
like sh ells, no le s s integral p arts of nature than are the substa
n c e s they cover, but better addressed to the eye and more
open to observation. I would not say that substance e x is ts for
the sake of appearance, or faces for the sake of masks, or the
p a s sio n s for the sake of poetry and virtue. Nothing a rise s in
nature for the sak e of anything e l s e ; all these p h a s e s and
products are involved equally in the round of e x i s t e n c e .............
George Santayana 1
1Soliloquies in E ngland and L ater S o lilo q u ies (New York: S cribners,
1922), pp. 131-132.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The report presented here w as developed in connection with
a study of interaction undertaken for the Department of Social
Anthropology and the Social S ciences Research Committee of
the U niversity of Edinburgh and a study of social stratification
supported by a Ford Foundation grant directed by P rofessor
E. A. S hils at the U niversity of Chicago. I am grateful to th ese
so u rc e s of guidance and support. I would like to express
thanks to my teac h ers C. W. M .Hart, W. L. Warner, and E. C.
Hughes. [ want, too, to thank E lizabeth Bott, Ja m es Littlejohn,
and Edward Banfield, who helped me at the beginning of the
study, and fellow -students of occupations at the University of
Chicago who helped me later. Without the collaboration of my
wife, Angelica S. Goffman, th is report would not have been
written.
PREFA CE
1 mean th is report to serve a s a sort of handbook detailing
one sociological perspective from which social life can be
studied, esp ecially the kind of social life thar is organised
within the physical confines of a building or plant. A set of
features will be described which together form a framework that
can be applied to any concrete social establishm ent, be it
domestic, industrial, or commercial.
The perspective employed in this report is that of the theatrical
performance ; the principles derived are dramaturgical
ones. I shall consider the way in which the individual in ordinary
work situations presents him self and his activity to others,
the ways in which he guides and controls the im pression they
form of him, and the kinds of things he may and may not do
while sustaining his performance before them. In using th is
model I will attempt not to make light of its obvious inadequacies.
The stage p resen ts things that are make-believe ; presumably
life p resen ts things that are real and som etim es not well
rehearsed. More important, perhaps, on the stage one player
»resents himself in the guise of a cha^.cter to ch aracters projected
by other p lay ers; the audience co n stitu tes a third party
to the interaction—one that is essen tial and yet, if the stage
performance were real, one that would not be there. In real life,
the three p arties are com pressed into tw o; the part one individual
p lays is tailored to the parts played by the others present,
and yet these others also constitute the audience. Still
other inadequacies in th is model will be considered later.
The illustrative materials used in this study are of mixed
sta tu s: some are taken from respectable rese arch e s where qualified
generalisations are given concerning reliably recorded
regularities; some are taken from informal memoirs written by
colourful peo p le; many fall in between. The justification for
th is approach (as I take to be the justification for Simmei’s
also) is that the illustrations together fit into a coherent framework
that ties together bits of experience the reader h as already
had and provides the student with a guide worth testing in casestu
d ies’of institutional social life.
The framework is presented in logical steps. The introduction
is necessarilv abstract and may be skipped.
T A B L E OF C O N T EK T S
PA G E
A ck no w ledg em en ts
P re fa c e
'N T R O D U C T IO N ............................................................................... 1
CH AP.
i P E R F O R M A N C E S ............................................................ 10
II TEAMS ............................................................................... 47
ill REGIONS AND REGION BEHAVIOUR ... 66
iV D IS C R E P A N T R O L E S ......................................... 87
V COMMUNICATION OUT OF C H A R A C T E R ... 107
VI T H E ARTS OF IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT ... 132
VII CONCLUSION ............................................................ 152
INTRODUCTION
When an individual enters the presence of others, they
commonly seek to acquire information about him or to bring into
play information about him already p o s se sse d . They will be
in terested in his general socio-econom ic sta tu s, his conception
of self, his attitude toward them, his com petence, his trustw
orthiness, etc. Although some of this information seem s to be
sought almost a s an end in itself, there are usually quite practic
al reasons for acquiring it. Information about the individual
helps to define the situation, enabling others to know in advance
what he will expect of them and what they may expect of
him. Informed in th ese ways, the others will know how best to
act in order to call forth a desired resp o n se from him.
For th o se present, many sources of information become
a c c e ssib le and many carriers (or ' s ig n -v e h ic le s’) become available
for conveying th is information. If unacquainted with the
individual, observers can glean clu es from his conduct and
appearance which allow them to apply their previous experience
with individuals roughly sim ilar to the one before them or, more
important, to apply untested stereotypes to him. They can also
assum e from past experience that only individuals of a particular
kind are likely to be found in a given social setting. They
c a n rely on what the individual say s about him self or on documentary
evidence he provides a s to who and what he is. If
ttiey know, or know of, the individual by virtue of experience
prior to the interaction, they can rely on assum ptions as to the
p ersisten c e and generality of psychological traits as a means
of predicting his p resen t and future behaviour.
However, during the period in which the individual is in the
im m ediate p resen ce of the others, few ev en ts may occur which
directly provide the others with the conclusive infonnation they
will need if they are to direct wisely their own activity. Many
crucial facts lie beyond the time and place of interaction or lie
concealed within it. For- example, the ' t r u e ’ or ’ r e a l’ attitudes,
beliefs, and em otions of the individual can be as c e rtained
only indirectly, through his avow als or through what
1
appears to be involuntary expressive behaviour. Similarly,
if the individual offers the others a product or service, they will
often find that during the interaction there will be no time and
p la ce immediately available for eating the pudding that the
proof can be found in. They will be forced to accep t some
ev en ts a s conventional or natural signs of something not directly
available to the se n ses. In Ichheiser’s te r m s 1, the individual
will have to act so that he intentionally or unintentionally
expresses himself, and the others will in turn have to be
impressed in some way by him.
We find, then, that when the individual is in the immediate
presence of others, his activity will have a promissory character.
T he others are likely to find that they must accept the
individual on faith, offering him a just return while he is present
before them in exchange for something whose true value
will not be estab lish ed until after he has left their presence.
(Of course, the others also live by inference in their dealings
with the physical world, but it is only in the world of social
interaction that the o b je cts about which they make inferences
will purposely facilitate and hinder this inferential process.)
T he security that they justifiably feel in making inferences
about the individual will vary, of course, depending on such
factors a s the amount of previous information they p o s s e s s
about him, but no amount of such past evidence can entirely
obviate the n ec essity of acting on the b asis of inferences.
L et us now turn from the others to the point of view of the
individual who presents him self before them. He may wish them
to think highly of him, or to think that he thinks highly of them,
or to perceive how in fact he feels toward them, or to obtain no
clear-cut im pression; he may wish to ensure sufficient harmony
so that the interaction can be sustained, or to defraud, get rid
of, confuse, m islead, antagonize, or insult them. R egardless of
the particular objective which the individual has in mind and of
h is motive for having th is objective, it will be in his in te rests
to control the conduct of the others, especially their responsive
treatment of him. 2 T h is control is achieved largely by influencing
the definition of the situation which the others come to
formulate, and he can influence this definition by expressing
himself in such a way as to give them the kind of im pression
'G u s ta v Icheiser, ‘ Misunderstandings in Human R e la tio n s ', Supplement
to The A m erican Journal o f Sociology, LV, (September, 1949) pp. 6-7.
a i!ere 1 owe much to an unpublished paper by Tom Burns of the University of
Edinburgh, where the argument is presented rhat in all interaction a basic
underlying theme is the desire of each participant to guide and control the
response made by the others present.
2
that will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with h is
own plan. Thus, when an individual appears in the presence of
others, there will usually be some reason for him to mobilize
his activity so that it will convey an im pression to others which
it is in his in te rests to convey.
I have said that when an individual appears before others
his actions will influence the definition of the situation which
they come to have. Sometimes the individual will ac t in a
thoroughly calculating manner, expressing him self in a given
way solely in order to give the kind of impression to others that
is likely to evoke from them a specific response he is concerned
to obtain. Sometimes the individual will be calculating in
h is activity but be relatively unaware that this is the case.
Sometimes he will intentionally and consciously express himself
in a particular way, but chiefly because the tradition of his
group or social sta tu s require this kind of expression and not
b ec au se of any particular response (other than vague acceptance
or approval) that is likely to be evoked from those impressed
by the expression. Sometimes the traditions of an
individual’s role will lead him to give a well-designed im pression
of a particular kind and yet he may be neither consciously
nor unconsciously disposed to create such an impression. The
others, in their turn, may be suitably im pressed by the individual’s
efforts to convey something, or may sceptically examine
a s p e c ts of his activity of whose significance he is not aware,
or may misunderstand the situation and come to conclusions
that are warranted neither by the individual’s intent nor by the
facts. In any case, in so far as the others act as i f the individual
had conveyed a particular impression, we may take a functional
or pragmatic view and say that the individual has ’effectiv
e ly ’ projected a given definition of the situation and 'e f fe c tiv
e ly ’ fostered the understanding that a given sta te of affairs
obtains.
When we allow that the individual projects a definition of
the situation when he appears before others, we must also see
chat the others, however p assiv e their role may seem to be, will
them selves effectively project a definition of the situation by
virtue of their response to the individual and by virtue of any
lin es of action they initiate to him. Ordinarily we find that the
definitions of the situation projected by the several different
participants are sufficiently attuned to one another so that open
contradiction will not occur. I do not mean that there will be
the kind of consensus that arise s when each individual present
candidly ex p resses what he really feels and honestly agrees
3
with the expressed feelings of the others present. T his kind of
harmony is an optim istic ideal and in any c a se not necessary
for the smooth working of society. Rather, each participant is
expected to suppress his immediate heartfelt feelings, conveying
a view of the situation which he feels the others will be
able to find at le a st temporarily acceptable. The m aintenance
of th is surface of agreement, this veneer of con sen su s, is
facilitated by each participant concealing his own wants behind
statem ents which a s se rt values to which everyone p resen t is
likely to give lip-service. Further, there is usually a kind of
division of definitional labour. Each participant is allow ed to
establish the tentative official ruling regarding m atters which
are vital to him bat not imm ediately important to others, e.g.,
the rationalizations and justifications by which he accounts for
h is p ast activ ity ; in exchange for th is courtesy he rem ains
silent or non-committal on m atters important to others but not
immediately important to him. We have then a kind of interactional
modus vivendi. Together the participants contribute to
a single overall definition of the situation which involves not
so much a real agreement as to what e x ists but rather a real
agreement as to whose claim s concerning what is s u e s will be
temporarily honoured. Real agreement will also exist concem the
desirability of avoiding an open conflict of definitions of
the situation. 1 L et us refer to this level of agreement as a
'w orking c o n s e n s u s ’. It is to be understood that th e working
co n sen su s established in one interaction setting will be quite
different in content from the working co n sen su s esta b lish ed in a
different type of setting. T hus, between two friends at lunch, a
reciprocal show of affection, resp ect, and concern for the other
i s maintained. In service occupations, on the other hand, the
sp ecialist often m aintains an image of d isin terested involvement
in the problem of the client, while the client responds with
a show of respect for the com petence and integrity of the sp e cia
list. R egardless of such differences in content, however, the
general form of th e se working arrangements is the same.
In noting the tendency for a participant to accept the definitional
claim s made by the others present, we can appreciate
the crucial importance of the -information that the individual
initially p o s s e s s e s or acq u ires concerning his fellow partici­
1An interaction can be purposely set up a s a time and p lace for voicing
differences in opinion, but in such c a s e s participants must be careful to
agree not to disagree on the proper tone of voicc, vocabulary, and degree of
se rio u s n e ss in which all arguments are to be phrased, and upon the mutual
resp ect which disagreeing participants must carefully continue to ex press
toward one another. T h is d eb aters' or academ ic definition of the situation
may also be suddenly and judiciously invoked as a way of tran slating a
serious conflict of view s into one that can be handled within a framework
accep tab le to all present.
4
pants, for it i s on the b a s is of th is initial information that the
individual s ta rts to define the situation and s ta rts to build up
lin e s of resp o n siv e action. T he in d ividual’s initial projection
com mits him to what he is proposing to be and req u ires him to
drop all p rete n ce s of being other things. ■ As th e interaction
among the p articip an ts p rogresses, additions and m odifications
in th is initial informational s ta te will of co u rse occur, -but it is
essen tial that th e se later developm ents be related withouc contradiction
to, and even built up from, the initial p ositions taken
by the several p articipants. It would seem that an individual
can more ea sily make a choice a s to what line of treatment to
demand from and extend to the others present at the beginning
o f an encounter than he can alter the lin e of treatment th at is
being pursued once the interaction i s underway.
In everyday life, of course, there is a clea r understanding
that first im pressions are important. T hus, the work adjustm ent
of th o se in serv ice occupations will often hinge upon a capacity
to se iz e and hold the in itiativ e in the service relation, a capac
ity that will require subtle a g g re ssiv e n e ss on the part of the
server when he is of lower socio-econom ic sta tu s than his
client. W. F. Whyte su g g e sts the w aitress as an exam ple:
T h e firsc point that sta n d s out i s that the w aitress who bears up
under p ressure does not simply respond ro her custom ers. She a c ts with
som e skill to control their behaviour. ] The first question to ask when
we look at the custom er relatio nsh ip is, “ D oes the w a itre ss get the jump
on the customer, or does the custom er get the jump on the w a i t r e s s ? '1
T he skilled w aitress r e a liz e s the crucial nature of th is question . . . .
The sk illed w a itre ss ta c k le s the custom er with confidence and
without h esita tio n . For exam ple, she may find that a new custom er h as
se ated him self before she could clear off the dirty d ish e s and change rhe
cloth. He i s now leaning on the table studying the menu. She greets
him, sa y s, “ May I change the cover, p le a s e and, without waiting for
an answ er, takes his menu away from him so that he moves back from the
table, and sh e goes about her work. T h e relatio n sh ip ,is handled politely
but firmly, and there is never any question a s to who is in charge. 1
When the interaction that is initiated by " f i r s t im p re ssio n s”
i s its e lf merely th e initial interaction in an extended s e rie s of
in te ra ctio n s involving the sam e p articip an ts, we speak of
''getting off on the right fo o t” and feel that it is crucial that we
do so. T hus, one le arn s that som e te ac h ers take the following
v ie w :
You c a n 't ever ler them get the upper hand on you or you're through.
So I sta rt out tough. T he first day I get a new c l a s s in, I let them
know who’s b o ss . . . . You've got to sta rt oil tough, then you can ea s e
up a s you go along. If you sta rt out easy-going, when you try to get
tough, th ey ’ll just look at you and l a u g h . 2
1 W. F. Whyte, 11 When Workers and C ustom ers M eet,” Chap. VII, Industry
am i S o ciety, e d .W .F . Whyte (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1946), pp. 132-133?
T e a c h e r interview quoted by Howard S. Becker, " S o c ia l C l a s s V ariations
in rhe T eacher-P upil R e la tio n s h ip ," Journal o f E ducational Sociology,
XXV, 459.
5
Similarly, attendants ih mental institutions may feel that if the
new patient i s sharply put in his p lace the first day on the ward
and made to se e who i s boss, much future difficulty will be
prevented. 1
Given the fact that the individual effectively p ro jects a
definition of the situation when he enters the presence of
others, we can assum e that events may occur within the interaction
which contradict, discredit, or otherw ise throw doubt
upon th is projection. When th ese disruptive events occur, the
interaction its elf may come to a confused and em barrassed halt.
Some of the assum ptions upon which the responses of the particip
an ts had been predicated become untenable, and the particip
an ts find them selves lodged in an interaction for which the
situation h as been wrongly defined and is now no longer defined.
At such moments the individual whose presentation h as
been discredited may feel asham ed while the others present may
feel hostile, and all the participants may come to feel ill at
ease, nonplussed, our of countenance, em barrassed, experiencing
the kind of anomie that is generated when the minute social
system of face-to-face interaction breaks down.
In stressin g the fact that the initial definition of the situation
projected by an individual tends to provide a plan for the
co-operative activity that follow s—in stressin g this action point
o f view —we must not overlook the crucial fact that any projected
definition of the situation also h as a distinctive moral
character. It i s this moral character of projections that will
chiefly concern us in this report. Society is organized on the
principle that any individual who p o s s e s s e s certain social
characteristics has a moral right to expect that others will
value and treat him in a correspondingly appropriate way.
Connected with this principle is a second, namely that an individual
who implicitly.or explicitly signifies that he has certain
social ch aracteristics ought to have this claim honoured by
others and ought in fact to be what he claim s he is. In consequence,
when an individual projects a definition of the situation
and thereby makes an implicit or explicit claim to be a
person of a particular kind, he autom atically exerts a moral
demand upon the others, obliging them to value and treat him in
the manner that persons of his kind have a right to expect. He
also im plicitly forgoes all claim s to be things he does not
appear to b e 2 and hence forgoes the treatment that would be
1 Harold T axel, 'Authority Structure in a Mental Hospital Ward’, Unpublished
Master’s th e s is , Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953-
2 T hia role of the w itness in limiting what it is the individual can be has
been stressed by E xistentialists, who see ic as a basic threat ro individual
freedom. See Jean-P aul Sartre; L ’etre e t le neant ( P a ris : Gallimard, 1948),
p. 319 ff.
6
appropriate for such individuals TKv. others find, then, chit the
individual has informed them as to whac is and a s to what ^hey
ought to s e e as the ' i s ’.
We cannot judge the importance of definitional disruptions
by the fre<|'iency with which they occur, for apparently they
n-rmld occur more frequently were noc constant precautions
taken. We find that preventive p ractices are constantly employed
to u.void th e se em barrassm ents and that corrective practic
e s are constantly employed to com pensate for discrediting
o ccurrences that have not been su ccessfu lly avoided. When the
individual employs th ese strateg ie s and ta c tic s to protect his
own projections, we may refer to them a s 'd e fe n s iv e pract
i c e s ’ ; when a participant employs them to save the definition
of the situation projected by another, we speak of 'p ro te ctiv e
p ra c tic e s ’ or ' t a c t ’. Together, ’defensive and protective practic
e s comprise the techniques employed to safeguard the impression
fostered by an individual during his p resen ce before
others. It should be added that while we are perhaps ready to
see that no fostered im pression would survive if defensive
p ractices were not employed, we are perhaps le s s ready to se e
that few im pressions could survive if those who received the
im pression did not exert tact in their reception of it.
In addition to the fact that precautions are taken to prevent
disruption of projected definitions, we may also note that an
intense interest in th ese disruptions comes to play a significant
role in the social life of the group. P ractical jokes and
social games are played in which em barrassm ents which are to
be taken unseriously are purposely engineered. 1 P h an ta sie s
are created in which devastating exposures occur. A necdotes
from the p a s t—real, embroidered, or fictitious—are told and retold,
detailing disruptions which occurred, almost occurred, or
occurred and were admirably resolved. There seem s to be no
grouping which does not have a ready supply of th e se games,
reveries, and cautionary tales, to be used a s a source of humour,
a c a th a rsis for anxieties, and a sanction for inducing individuals
to be modest in their claim s and reasonable in their
projected expectations. T he individual m ay tell him self through
dreams of getting into im possible positions. Fam ilies tell of
the time a guest got his d ates mixed and arrived when neither
the house nor anyone in it was ready for him. Jo u rn alists tell
of tim es when an all-too-meaningful misprint occurred, and the
paper’s assumption of objectivity or decorum was humorously
discredited. Public Servants tell of times a client ridiculously
1Erving Goffmin, 'C ommunication Conduct in an Island Com m unity’ (Unpublished
Ph.D . dissertatio n, Department of Sociology, University of
Chicago, 1953), pp. 319-327.
7
mis-understood form instructions, giving answ ers which implied
;m unanticipated and bizarre definition of the situation. 1 Seamen,
whose home away from home is rigorously he-man, tell
stories of coming back home and inadvertently asking mother to
" p a s s the f-cking b u tte r” . 2 Diplomats tell of the time a nearsighted
Queen asked a republican am bassador about the health
of h is King. 3
To summarize, then, I assum e that when an individual
appears before others he will have many motives for trying to
control the im pression they receive of the situation. T h is
report is concerned with some of the common techniques that
in teractan ts employ to sustain such im pressions and with some
of the common contingencies asso ciate d with the employment of
th ese techniques. The specific content of any activity presented
by the individual participant, or the role it pl.\ys in the
interdependent a c tiv itie s of an on-going social system , will not
be at is s u e ; I shall be concerned only with the p articip an t’s
dramaturgical problems of presenting the activity before others.
The iss u e s dealt with by stage-craft and stage-management are
sometimes trivial but they are quite general; they seem to
occur everywhere in social life, providing a clear-cut dimension
for formal sociological analysis.
It will be convenient to end th is introduction with some
definitions that are implied in whac has gone before an.) required
for what is to follow. For the purpose of this report,
interaction (that .is, face-to-face interaction) may be roughly
•Jctined as the reciprocal influence of individuals upon one
another’s actions when in one another’s immediate physical
presence. An interaction may be defined as all the interaction
which occurs throughout any one occasion when a given set of
individuals are in one another’s continuous presence; the term
'a n encounter’ would do as well. A ‘ perform ance’ may be
defined a s all the activity of a given participant on a given
occasion which serves to influence in any way any of the other
participants. Taking a particular participant and his performance
a s a b asic point of reference, we may refer ro those who
contribute the other perform ances as the audience, observers,
or co-participants. The pre-established pattern of action which
is unfolded during a performance and which may be presented or
1Peter lilau, ' Dynamics of Bureaucracy ' (Ph.D. dissertatio n. Department of
Sociology, Columbia University, forthcoming, University of Chicago P tcss),
pp. 127-129.
2 ^’nlter M. b eattie, Jr., 'T h e Merchant S eam an' (Unpublished M.A.
Report, Department of Sociology, University of Cliic.iRo, 1950), |>. 35.
3 Sir l-'redcrick Ponsonby, R eco llectio n s o f Three R eien s (New York:
Dutton, 1952), p. 46.
8
played through on other o cc asio n s may be called a 'p a r t ’ or
‘ ro u tin e’. 1 T h ese situational terms can easily be related to
conventional structural ones. When an individual or performer
p lays the sam e part to the sam e audience on different o c c asions,
-a social relationship is likely to arise. Defining social
role as the enactment of rights and d u ties attached to a given
status, 'We can say that a social role will involve one or more
parts and that each of th ese different parts may be presented by
the performer on a se ries of o ccasions to the sam e kinds of
audience or to an audience of the sam e persons.
1For comments on the importance of distinguishing between a routine of
interaction and any particular instance when this routine is played through,
s e e John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, The Theory o f Games ana
E conom ic B ehaviour (2nd e d . ; P.-inceton: Princeton University P ress,
1947), p. 49.
C H A P T E R I
PERFORMANCES
Belief in the Part One is Playing
When an individual plays a part he implicitly requests his
observers to take seriously the impression that is fostered
before them. They are asked to believe that the character they
s e e actually p o s s e s s e s the attributes he appears to p o sse ss,
that the task he performs will have the consequences that are
implicitly claim ed for it, and that, in general, m atters are what
they appear to be. In line with this, there is the popular view
that the individual offers his performance and p uts on his show
' for the benefit of other people.' It will be convenient to begin
a consideration of performances by turning the question around
and looking at the individual’s own belief in the impression of
reality that he attem pts to engender in those among whom he
finds himself.
At one extreme, ■we find that the performer can be fully
taken in by his own a c t; he can be sincerely convinced that the
impression of reality which he sta g es is the real reality. When
his audience is also convinced in this way about the show he
puts o n —and th is seem s to be the typical c a se —then for the
moment, anyway, only the sociologist or the socially disgruntled
will have any doubts about the 'r e a l n e s s ’ of what is
presented.
At the other extreme, we find that the performer may not be
taken in at all by his own routine. This possibility is understa
n d ab le, since no one is in quite a s good an observational
position to se e through the act a s the person who puts it on.
Coupled with this, the performer may be moved to .guide the
conviction of his audience only a s a m eans to other ends,
having no ultimate concern in the conception that they have of
him or of the situation. When the individual has no belief in
h is own a c t and no ultimate concern with the beliefs of his
audience, we may call him cynical, reserving the term sincere
for individuals who believe in the impression fostered by their
own performance. It should be understood that the cynic, with
all his professional disinvolvem ent, may obtain unprofessional
pleasures from his masquerade, experiencing a kind of gleeful
spiritual aggression from the fact that he can toy at will with
something his audience must take se rio u s ly .1
’ P erhaps the real crime of the confidence man is not that he ta k e s money
from his victims buc chat he robs all of us of the belief chat m iddle-class
manners and appearance can be sustained only by m iddle-class people. A
10
It is not assumed, of course, that all cynical performers are
interested in deluding their audiences for purposes of what is
called 's e lf - in te re s t' or private gain. A cynical individual may
delude h is audience for what he considers to be their own good,
or for the good of the community, etc. For illustrations of this
we need not appeal to sadly enlightened showmen such as
Marcus Aurelius or Hsun Tzu. We know that in service occupations
practitioners who may otherwise be sincere are sometim
es forced to delude their custom ers because their custom ers
show such a heartfelt demand for it. Doctors who are led into
giving placebos, filling-station attendants who resignedly
check and recheck tire p ressures for anxious women motorists,
shoe clerks who sell a shoe that fits but tell the customer it is
the size she w ants to hear—these are cynical performers whose
audiences will not allow them to be sincere. Similarly, we find
that sym pathetic p atients in mental wards will som etim es feign
bizarre symptoms so that student nurses will not be subjected
to a disappointingly sane performance. 1 So also, when inferiors
extend their most lavish reception for visiting superiors,
the selfish desire to win favour may not be the chief motive;
the inferior may be tactfully attempting to put the superior at
ea se by sim ulating the kind of world the superior is thought to
take for granted.
I have suggested two extrem es: an individual may be taken
in by his own act or be cynical about it. T hese extremes are
something a little more than just the ends of a continuum. Each
provides the individual with a position which h as its own particular
secu rities and defences, so there will be a tendency for
those who have travelled close to one of th ese poles to complete
the voyage. Starting with lack of inward belief in one’s
role, the individual may follow the natural movement described
by P a r k :
It is probably no mere historical accident that the word person, in its
first meaning, ts a mask. It is rather a recognition of the fact that
disabused professional can be cynically hostile 10 the service relation his
clien ts expect him to extend to them ; the confidence man is in a position
to hold the whole 1legit * world in this contempt.
'S e e L'dxel, op. c it., p. 4. Marry Stack Sullivan has suggested that the tact
of institutionalized performers can operate in the ocher direction, resulting
in a kind of noblessc^oblige sanity. bee his ‘ Socio-Psychiatric
Research Am erican Journal o f P sychiatry, X, pp. 987*988.
MA study of ’.social recoveries 1 in one of our large mental hospitals some
y ears ago caught me that patients were often released from care because
they had learned noc to manifest symptoms to the environing p erso n s; in
other words, had integrated enough of the personal environment to realize
the prejudice opposed to their delusions. It seem ed almost as if they grew
wise enough to be tolerant of the tmbeciliry surrounding them, having
finally discovered that it was stupidity and not malice. They could then
secure satisfaction from co n tact with others, while discharging a part of
their cravings by psychotic means.
11
everyone is always and everywhere, more or le s s consciou sly , playing a
role . . . It i s in these ro les that we know each o th er; it is in th ese
ro le s that we know ourselv es. 1
In a sense, and in so Jar as th is mask represents the conception we
have formed of ourselves—the role we are striving to live up to —tliis
m ask is our truer se lf, the se lf we would like to be. In th e end, our
conception of our role becom es second nature and an integral part of our
personality. come into the world as individuals, achieve character,
and become p e rso n s .2
T h is may be illuscrated from the writer’s study of an island
community of crofters, that is, sm all-holding farmers. 3 For the
la st four or five y ears the is la n d 's tourist hotel has been owned
and operated by a married couple of crofter origins. From the
beginning, the owners were forced to set aside their own conceptions
a s to how life ought to be led, displaying in the hotel
a full round of m iddle-class se rv ices and am enities. Lately,
however, it appears that the managers have become le s s cynical
about the performance that they s ta g e ; they them selves are
becoming middle c la s s and more and more enamoured of the
se lv es their c lie n ts impuce to them. Another illustration may
be found in the raw recruit who initially follows army etiquette
in order to avoid physical punishment and who eventually comes
to follow the rules so that his organization will not be shamed
and his officers and fellow -soldiers will respect him.
As suggested, the cycle of disbelief-to-belief can be followed
in the other direction, startin g with conviction or insecure
aspiration and ending in cynicism . Professions which the
public holds in religious awe often allow their recruits to
follow the cycle in th is direction, anti often recruits follow it in
this direction not because of a slow realization that they are
deluding their au d ien ce—for by ordinary social standards the
claim s they make may be quite valid—but because they can use
this cynicism a s a means of insulating their inner s e lv e s from
contact with the audience. ■ And we may even expect to find
typical careers of faith, with the individual starting out with
one kind of involvement in the performance he is required to
give, then moving back and forth several tim es between sin c erity
and cynicism before com pleting all the p h ases and turningpoints
of self-belief for a person of his station.
While we can expect to find natural movement back and
forth between cynicism and sincerity, s till we must not rule out
the kind of transitional points that can be sustained, on the
l Robert Ezra Park, R a ce and Culture (G lencoe.|lll.: T h e Free P re s s , 1950),
p. 249.
3 H id ., p. 250.
3 The study w as financed by the Department of Social Anthropology And th e
Social S cien ces R esearch Committee of the University of Kdinburgh and
reported io part in Goffman, op. c it.
12
strength of a little self-illusion. We find that the individual
may attempt to induce the audience to judge him and the situation
in a particular way, and he may seek th is judgement as
an ultimate end in itself, and yet he may not com pletely believe
that he deserves the valuation of self which he ask s for or that
the impression of reality which he fosters is valid. Another
mixture of cynicism and belief is suggested in Kroeber’s d iscussion
of sham anism :
Next, there is the old question of deception« Probably m ost shamans
or medicine men, the world over, help along with sleight-of-hand in curing
and especially in exhibitions of power. T his sleight-of-hand is sometimes
d elib erate; in many c a s e s aw areness is perhaps not deeper chan
the foreconscious. The attitude, whether there has been repression or
not, seem s to be a s toward a pious fraud. Field ethnographers seem
quite generally convinced that even sham ans who know that they add
fraud neverth eless also believe in their powers, and especially in those
of other sh am an s: they consult them whet! they them selves or theLr
children are ill. 1
Front
We have been using the term 'perform ance' to refer to all
the activity 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. It
will be convenient to label as 'f r o n t ’ 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. Front, then, is the expressive equipment of a
standard kind intentionally or unwittingly employed by the
individual during his performance. For preliminary purposes, it
v.ill be convenient to distinguish and label what seem to be the
stand aril parts of front.
First, there is the 's e t t i n g ’, involving furniture, decor,
physical lay-out, and other background item s which supply the
scenery and stage props for the sp ate of human action played
out before, within, or upon it. A setting tends to stay put,
geographically speaking, so that those who would use a particular
setting a s part of their performance cannot begin their
act until they have brought them selves to the appropriate place
and must term inate their performance when they leave it. It is
only in exceptional circum stances that the setting, in a sense,
follows along with the perform ers; we see this in the funeral
cortege, the civic parade, and the dream-like p ro cessio n s that"
kings and queens are made of. In the main, th e se exceptions
seem to offer some kind of extra protection for performers who
; A.I.. Krocber, The feature o f Culture (C hicago: University of Chicago
P ress, ll)^2), p. 3 N .
13
are, or who have momentarily become, highly sacred. I hese
worthies are to be distinguished, of course, from quite profane
performers of the peddler c la s s who move their pl;ice of work
between performances, often being forced to do so. In the
matter of having one fixed place for o n e 's setting, a ruler may
be too sacred, a peddler too profane.
In thinking about the scenic a s p e c ts of front, we tend to
think of the living room in a particular house and the small
number of performers who can thoroughly identify them selves
with it. We have given insufficient attention to assem blages of
of sign-equipment which large numbers of performers can call
their own for short periods of time. It is characteristic of
Western European countries, and no doubt a source of stability
f o r ^ , 1" that a large number of luxurious settings are available
for hire to anyone of the right kind who can afford them. One
illustration of this may be cited from a study of the higher
civil servant in Britain:
T he question liow far the men who rise to the top in the Civil Service
take on the 'tone* or 'colour* of a c la s s other than that to which they
belong by birth is delicate and difficult. The only definite information
bearing on the question is the figures relating to the membership of the
great London clubs. More than three-quarters of our high adm inistrative
o fficials belong to one or more clubs of high sta tu s and considerable
Luxury, where the entrance fee might be twenty guineas or more, and rhe
annual subscription from twelve to twenty guineas. T h ese in stitu tio ns
are of the upper c la s s (not even of the upper-middle) in their prem ises,
their equipment, the style of living practised there, their whole atmosphere.
Though many of the members would not be described a s
wealthy, only a wealthy man would unaided provide for himself and his
family sp ace, food and drink, service, and other am enities of life to the
same standard a s he will find at the Uruon, the T rav ellers’, or the
Reform. 1
Another example can be found in the recent development of the
medical profession where we find that it is increasingly important
for a doctor to have a c c e s s to the elaborate scientific
stage provided by large hospitals, so that fewer and fewer
doctors are able to feel that their settin g is a place that they
can lock up at night. 2
If we take the term 's e t t i n g ’ to refer to the scenic parts ol
expressive equipment, -we may take the term 'p erso n al front’ to
refer to the other items of expressive equipment, the item s that
we most intimately identify with the performer himself and that
we naturally expect will follow the performer wherever he goes.
As part of personal front we may include: insignia of office or
rank; clothing; sex, age, and racial ch arac teristics; size and
lo o k s; p o sture; speech pattern s; facial ex p ressio n s; bodily
1U.K . Dale, T ke Higher C ivil Service o f Great ftritain (Oxford: Oxford
University P re ss , 1941), p. 50.
2 David Solomon, 'C a re e r Contingencies ol Chicago P h y s ic ia n s ' (Unpublished
Ph. IX dissertation, Department ol Sociology, University of Chicaao.
1952). p. 74.
14
g estu re s; an 1 the like. Some of these vehicles for conveying
signs, such a s racial characteristics, are relatively fixed and
over a span of time Jo not vary for the individual from one
situation to another. On the orhcr hand, some of these sign
vehicles are relatively mobile or transitory, such as facial
exp-ession, an 1 can vary .luring a performance from one moment
to the next. It is sometimes convenient to divide the stimuli
which make up personal front into 'a p p e a ra n c e ’ and ’ manner’,
according to the function performed by the information that
these stimuli convey. ' A ppearance’ may be taken to refer to
those stimuli which function at the time to tell us of the
performer’s social statu ses. T hese stimuli also tell us of
the individual's temporary ritual state, that is, whether he is
engaging in formal social activity, work, or informal recreation,
whether or not he is celebrating a new phase in the season
cycle or in his life-cycle. 'M anner' may be taken to refer to
those stimuli which function at the time to warn u s of the interaction
role the performer will expect to play in the on-coming
situation. T hus a haughty aggressive manner may give the
impression that the performer expects to be the one who will
in itiate the verbal interaction and direct its course. A meek,
apologetic manner may give the impression that the performer
expects to follow the lead of others, or at le a st that he can 1>e
gotten to do so. Similarly, if an individual is angry his manner
will tell us upon whom he is likely to be in a position to vent
his anger.
We often expect, of course, a confirming consistency between
appearance and manner; we expect that the differences
in social sta tu s e s among the ioteractants will be expressed in
some way by congruent differences in the indications that are
made of expected interaction role. T his type of coherence of
front may be illustrated by the following description of the
procession of a mandarin through a Chinese city:
Coming closely behind . . . the luxurious chair of the mandarin,
carried by eight bearers, fills the vacant space in the street. Me is
mayor of the town, and for all practical purposes die supreme power in
it. lie is an ideal-looking official, for he is large and m assive in appearance,
whilst he has that stern and uncomprising look that is supposed to
be n ecessary in any magistrate who would hope to keep his sub jects in
order, lie lias a stem and forbidding asp ect, as though he were on his
way to the execution ground to have some criminal decapitated. T his is
the kind of air that the mandarins put on when they appear in public. In
the course of many years' experience. 1 have never once seen any of
them, from the highest to the lowest, with a smile on his facc or a look
of sympathy for the people whilst he was being carricd officially through
the streets. 1
b u t, of course, appearance and manner may tend to contradict
each other, as when a performer who appears to be of higher
1J . Macgowart, S id elig h ts on C hinese L ife (Philadelp hia: Lippincoct, 1908),
p. 187.
15
e s ta te than h is audience a c ts in a manner that is unexpectedly
equalitarian, or intimate, or apologetic, or when a performer
dressed in the garments of a high position presents himself to
an individual of even higher sta tu s.
In addition to the expected co n sisten cy between appearance
and manner, we expect, of course, some coherence among
setting, appearance, and manner. 1 In a sen se, such coherence
represents an ideal type that provides us with a means of stimulating
our interest in and attention to exceptions. In this the
student is assisted by the journalist, for exceptions to expected
co n sisten cy among setting, appearance, .and manner provide
the piquancy and glamour of many careers and the saleable
appeal of many magazine articles. 2
In order to explore more fully the relations among the several
parts of social front, it will be convenient to consider here a
significant characteristic of the information conveyed by front,
namely, its a b stra c tn ess and generality.
However specialized and unique a routine is, its social
front, with certain exceptions, will tend to claim facts that can
be equally claimed and asserted of other, somewhat different
routines. ; For example, many service occupations offer their
clien ts a performance that is illuminated with dramatic expressions
of clean lin ess, modernity, com petence, integrity, etc.
While in fact th ese abstract standards have a different significance
in different occupational performances, the observer is
encouraged to s tre s s the abstract sim ilarities. For the observer
this is a wonderful, chough som etim es disastrous, convenience.
Instead of having to maintain a different pattern of expectation
and responsive treatment for each slightly different performer
and performance, he can place the situation into a broad category
around which it is easy for him to mobilize his past experience
and stereo-typical thinking. O bservers then need only
be familiar with a small and hence manageable vocabulary of
fronts and know how to respond to them in order to orient themse
lv es in a wide variety of situations. T h u s in London the
current tendency for chimney s w e e p s 3 and perfume clerks to
wear white lab coats tends to provide the client with an understanding
that the delicate ta s k s performed by th ese persons
1Cl. Kenneth B urke's comments on the ' scene-act-agent r a t i o ’, A Grammar
o f M otives (New York: P rentice-H all, 1945) pp. 6-9.
^ For example, the New Yorker Profile on Roger Stevens (the real e s ta te
agent who engineered the s a le of the Empire State Building) comments
on the startling fact that Stevens h as a small house, a meagre office,
and no letterhead stationery. See E. J.K ah n , Jr., 'C lo s in g s and
O pen ing s', The New Yorker, February 13 and 20, 1954.
3 S ec Mervyn Jo n e s, 'White a s a S w eep ', The N ew Statesm an and Nation,
December 6, 1952.
16
will be performed in what has become a standardized, clinical,
confidential manner.
T here are grounds for believing that the tendency for a
large number of different a c ts to be presented from behind a
small number of fronts is a natural development in social organization.
Kadcliffe-Hrown has suggested th is in his claim
that a descriptive kinship system which gives each person a
unique place may work for very small communities, but, a s the
number of persons becom es large, clan segmentation becomes
n ecessary a s a means of providing a le ss complicated system
of identifications and treatm ents. 1 We see this tendency illustrated
in factories, barracks, and other large social estab lish ments.
Those who organize these establishm ents find it impossible
to provide a special cafeteria, special modes of payment,
special vacation rights, and special sanitary facilities
for evc-ry line and staff sta tu s category in the organization,
and at the same time they feel that persons of dissim ilar sta tu s
ought not to be indiscrim inately thrown together or classified
together. As a compromise, the full range of diversity is cut
at a few crucial points, and all those within a given bracket
are allowed or obliged to maintain the same social front in
certain situations.
In addition to the fact that different routines may employ
the same front, it is to be noted that a given social front
tends to become institutionalized in terms of the abstract
stereotyped expectations to which it gives rise, and tends to
take on a meaning and stability apart from the specific ta s k s
which happen at the time to be performed in its name. T he front
becomes a 'c o lle c tiv e representation’ and a fact in its own
right.
When an actor tak es on an established social role, usually
he finds that a particular front has already been estab lish ed for
it. Whether his acquisition of the role was primarily motivated
by a desire to perform the given task or by a desire to maintain
the corresponding front, the actor will find that he must do both.
Further, if the individual tak es on a task that is not only
new to him but also unestablished in the so c iety .-o r if he
attem pts to change the light in which his task is viewed, he is
likelv to find that there are already several w ell-established
fronts among which he must choose. Thus, when a task is
given a new front we seldom find that the front it is given is
itself new.
Since fronts tend ro be selected, not created, we may expect
trouble to arise when those who perform a given task are forced
1 A. U. Radcliffe-ftro wn, ’ The Social Organization of Australian T r i b e s ’,
O ceania, 1, 440.
17
to se le c t a su itab le front for them selves from among several
quite dissim ilar ones. Thus, in military organizations, ta s k s
are alw ays developing which (it is felt) require too much authority
and skill to be carried out behind the front maintained by
one grade of personnel and too little authority an.) sk i’l to be
carried out behind the front maintained by the ne-'r ;ra.l<* in
the hierarchy. Since there are relatively large jurm s between
grades, the rask will come to 'carry too much . a r k 1 or to
carry too little.
An interesting illustration of the dilemma of selectin g an
appropriate front from sev eral not quite fitting oi'es may be
found today in American medical organizations with respect to
the ta s k of adm inistering a n e s t h e s i a . 1 In so m : h o spitals
a n e sth e sia i s still adm inistered by nu rses behind the front that
nurses are allowed to have in h o spitals reg ard le ss of the ta sk s
they perform—a front involving ceremonial subordination and a
relatively low rate of pay. In order to estab lish anesthesiology
a s a speciality for graduate medical doctors, interested
practitioners have had to advocate strongly the idea that
adm inistering an e sth esia is a sufficiently complex and vital
task to justifying giving to those who perform it the ceremonial
and financial reward given to doctors. T he difference between
the front maintained by a nurse and the front maintained by a
doctor is great; many things that are acceptable for nu rses
are infra dignitatem for doctors. Some medical people have
felt that a nurse 'u n d er-ran k ed ' for the task of adm inistering
a n e sth e sia and that doctors 'o v e r-ran k e d ;’ were there an
estab lish ed sta tu s midway between nurse and doctor, an ea sie r
solution to the problem could perhaps be found. 2 Similady,
had the Canadian Army had a rank halfway between lieutenant
and captain, two and a half pips instead of two or three, then
Dental Corp’s captains, many of them of a tow ethnic origin,
could have been given a rank that would perhaps have been
more suitable in the ey es of the Army than the cap tain cies
they were actually given.
I do not mean here to s tre s s the point of view of a formal
organization or a so c ie ty ; the individual, as someone who
p o s s e s s e s a lim ited range of sign-equipment, must also make
unhappy choices. Thus, >in the crofting community studied by
J S ee the thorough treatment of this problem io Dan C. Lortie, ‘ Doctors
Without P a tie n t* : The A nesthesiologist, a New Medical Specialty Unpublished
Master’s th esis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago,
1950. See also Mark Murphv*s tliree-part Profile of Dr. Rovenstine,
1 A n e s t h e s i o l o g i s t The New Yorker. October 25, November 1, and November
8, 1947.
? lr should be added that in some h o sp itals the intern and the m edical student
perform task s that are beneath a doctor and above a nurse. Presumably
such ta s k s do not require a large amount of experience and practical
training» for while this intermediate statu s of doctor-in-training »is a
perm anent pare of hospitals, all tho se who hold it do so temporarily.
18
the writer, 'hosts often marked the visit of a friend by offering
him a dram of spirits, a glass of wine, some (home-made) brew,
o r a cup of tea. The higher the rank or temporary ceremonial
sta tu s of the visitor, the more likely he was to receive an offering
near the sp irits end of the continuum. Now one problem
asso ciated with this range of sign-equipment was that some
crofters could not afford to keep a bottle of spirits available,
so that wine tended to be the most indulgent gesture they could
employ. But perhaps a more common difficulty was the fact that
certain visitors, given their permanent and temporary statu s at
the time, outranked one potable and under-ranked the next one
in line. There was often a danger that the v isito r would feel
just a little affronted or, on the other hand, that the host’s
costly and limited sign equipment would be m isused. In our
middle c la s s e s a similar situation a rise s when a h o ste ss has to
decide whether or not to use the good silver, or which would be
the more appropriate to wear, her best afternoon dress or her
plainest evening gown.
[ have suggested that social front can be divided into
traditional parts, such a s setting, appearance, and manner, and
that (since different routines may be presented from behind the
same front) we may not find a perfect fit between the specific
character of a performance and the general so cialized guise in
which it appears to us. T hese two facts, taken together, lead
u s to appreciate that item s in the social front of a particular
routine are not only found in the social fronts of a whole range
of routines but also that the whole range of routines in which
one item of sign equipment is found will differ from the range of
routines in which another item in the sam e so cial front will be
found. Thus, a lawyer may talk to a client in a social setting
that he employs only for this purpose (or for a study), but the
clothes he w ears on such occasions, 'and which are suitable for
such occasions, he will also employ, with equal suitability, .at
dinner with colleagues and at the theatre with his wife. Similarly,
the prints that hang on his wall and the carpet on his floor
may be found in domestic social establishm ents. Of course, in
highly ceremonial occasions, setting, manner, and appearance
may all be relatively unique and specific, used only for performances
of a single type of routine, but such exclusive use of
sign equipment i s the exception rather than the rule.
Dramatic Realization
While in the presence of others, the individual typically
infuses his activity with signs which dramatically highlight and
portray confirmatory facts that might otherwise remain unapparent
or obscure. For if the individual’s activity is to
19
become significant to others, 'he must m obilize his activity so
that it will ex p ress during the interaction what he w ish es to
convey. In fact, th e performer may be required not only to
ex p ress his claim ed ca p ac itie s during the interaction but also
to do so during a split second in the interaction. T h u s, if a
baseball umpire is to give the impression th a t he is sure of his
judgement, he must forgo the moment of thought which might
make him sure of his judgement; he must give an instantaneous
decision so that the audience will be sure that he is sure of
his judgement. 1
It may be noted that in the case of some s ta tu s e s dramatization
presents no problem, since some of the a c ts which are
instrum entally e s se n tia l for the completion of the core task of
the sta tu s are at the same time wonderfully adapted, from the
point of view of communication, as m eans of vividly conveying
thé qualities and attributes claimed by the performer. The
roles of prizefighters, surgeons, violinists, and policemen are
c a s e s in point. T h ese a c tiv itie s allow for so much dramatic
self-expression that exemplary practioners—whether real or
fictional—become famous and are given a special place in the
commercially organized p h an tasies of the nation.
In many ca se s, however, dram atization of one's work does
constitute a problem. An illustration of this may be cited from
a recent study by Edith L entz, where the medical nursing staff
in a hospital is shown to have a problem that the surgical
nursing staff does not have:
T h e things which a nurse does for post-operative patients on the
surgical floor are frequently of reco^nizabl e importance, even to patients
who are strangers to hospital activ ities. For example, the parient
se e s h is nurse changing bandages, swinging orthopedic frames into
place, and can realise that these are purposeful activities. Even if
she cannot be at h is side, he can re sp e c t h er purposeful activities.
Medical nursing is also highly sk illed work . . . . The p h y sic ia n 's
diagnosis must rest upon careful observation of symptons over time
where the surgeon's are in larger part dependent on visib le things.
The lack of visibility creates problems on the m edical. A patient
will sec his nurse stop at the next bed and chat for a moment or
two with the patient there. He d o esn ’t know chae sh e i s observing
the sh allo w ness of the breathing and color and tone of the skin. He
thinks she is just visiting. So, alas, does h is family who may thereupon
d ecide that these nu rses a ren 't very im pressive. If the nurse spend s
more time «u the next bed chan at h is own, the patient may feel slighted .
. . • The nurses are “ w asting rim e0 u n le s s they are darting about
doing some visib le thing such a s administering hypoderm ics.2
Similarly, we find chat.the proprietor of a serv ice establishm ent
may find it difficult to dramatize what is actually being done
*See Babe Pinellt, a s told to Joe King. Mr Ump (Ph ilad elp h ia: Westminster
P re ss , 1953), p . 75.
2 Edith Lenc2 " A Comparison of Medical and Surgical F lo o rs* 1 (Mimeo:
New York Stare School of Industrial and Labour Relations, Cornell University,
1954), pp. 2-3.
for clien ts because the clien ts cannot " s e e ” the overhead
c o s ts of the service rendered them. T hus trustworthy undertakers
must charge a great deal for their highly visible product—
a coffin that has been transformed into a c a sk e t—because
many of the other co sts of conducting a funeral, are not ones
that can be readily dram atized.1 Merchants, too, often find
that they must charge high prices for things that look intrinsically
expensive in order to com pensate the establishm ent
for expensive things like insurance, slack periods, etc., that
never appear before the customers’ eyes.
The problem of dramatizing o n e 's work involves more than
merely making invisible c o s ts visible. The work that must be
done by those who fill certain sta tu se s is often so poorly
designed as an expression of a desired meaning, that if the
incumbent would dramatize the character of his role, 'he must
divert an appreciable amount of his energy to do so. And
th is activity diverted to communication will often require
different attributes from the ones which are being dramatized.
T hus to furnish a house so that it will express simple, quiet
dignity, the householder may have to race to auction sales,
haggle with antique dealers, and doggedly ca n va ss all the
local shops for proper wallpaper and curtain materials. To
give a radio talk that will sound genuinely informal, spontaneous,
and relaxed, the speaker may have to design his
script with painstaking care, testing one phrase after another,
in order to follow the content, language, rhythm, and pace of
everyday talk. 2 Similarly, a Vogue model, by her clothing,
stance, and facial expression, is able expressively to portray
a cultivated understanding of the book she poses in her hand;
but those who trouble to express them selves so appropriately
will have very little time left over'for reading. And so individuals
often find them selves with the dilemma of expression
versus action. Those who have the time and talent to perform
a task well may not, because of this, have the time or talent
to make it apparenc that they are performing well. It may be
said that some organizations resolve this dilemma for these
members by delegating the dramatic function to a specialist
who will spend his time expressing the meaning of the task
and spend no time actually doing it.
If we alter our frame of reference for a moment and turn
from a particular performance to the individuals who present it,
'M aterial on the burial business used 'hronihout tm s report is taken from
a forthcoming dissertation on the funetal director by Robert Habenstein.
I have also drawn on Mr Hafcenstein's seminar report describing the
undertaker’s work a s the staging of a performance.
2 John Hilton, " C a lc u la te d Sponcaniety,” Oxford B ook o f E nglish Talk
fOxford: Clarendon P ress, 1953), pp. 399-404.
21
we can consider an interesting fact about the round of different
routines which any group or c l a s s of individuals h elps to
perform. When we examine a group or cla ss, we find that the
members of it tend to invest their egos primarily in certain
routines, giving le s s s tre s s to the other o nes which they perform.
T h u s a professional man may be willing to take a very
modest role in the street, in a shop, or in h is home, but, in
the social sphere which encom passes h is display of professional
competency, he will be much concerned to make an
effective showing. In mobilizing his behaviour to make a
showing, he will be concerned not so much with the full round
of th e different routines he performs but only with the one
from which h is occupational reputation derives. It is upon
th is is s u e that some writers have chosen to distinguish groups
with aristocratic •habits (whatever their social status) from
those of m iddle-class character. T he aristocratic habit, •it
h a s been said, is one that m obilizes all the minor ac tiv ities of
life which fall outside the serious sp e cia lities of other c la s s e s
and in je cts into th ese a c tiv itie s an expression of character,
power, and high rank.
By what Important accomplishments is the young nobleman instructed
to support the dignity of h is rank, and to render himself worthy of that
superiority over h is fellow-citi zens, to which the virtue of h is ancestors
had raised them ? Is it by knowledge, by industry, by patience, by
self-denial, or by virtue of any kind? As all his words, a s a l l his
motions are attended to, he learns an habitual regard to every circumsta
n ce of ordinary behaviour, and studies to perform all those small
d u ties with the most exact propriety. As he is conscious ol how
much he is observed, and how much mankind arc disposed to favour ali
h is inclinations, he acts, upon the most indifferent o ccasio n s, with
that, freedom and elevation which the thought of this naturally inspires.
His air, his manner, his deportment, all mark that elegant, and graceful
sen se of his own superiority, which those who are bom to inferior
sta tio n s can hardly ever arrive at. T h ese are the arts by which he
proposes to make mankind more easily submit to h is authority, and to
govern their inclinations according to h is own pleasure; and in th is
he is seldom disappointed. T hese arts, supported by rank and preeminence,
are, upon ordinary o ccasion s, sufficient to govern the world. 1
If such virtuosi actually exist, they would provide a suitable
group in which to study the techniques by which activity is
transformed into a show.
Idealization
It w as suggested earlier that a performance of a routine
presents through its front some rather abstract claim s upon the
audience, claim s that are likely to be presented to them during
the performance of other routines. T his co n stitu tes one way
in which a performance is , in a sen se, 's o c ia lis e d ,’ moulded
and modified to fic into the understanding and expectations
l Adam Smith, The Theory o f Moral Sentim ents (L o n do n: Henry Bohn,
1853), p . 75.
22
of the society in which it is prt-senred. V!'e consider here
another important aspect of this socialization p ro cess—the
tendency for performers to offer their observers an impression
that is idealized in several different ways.
T he notion that a performance presents an idealized view
of the situation is, of course, quite common. C ooley's view
may be taken a s an illustration:
U we never cried to seem a little better than we are, how could
we improve or 'train ourselves from the outside inward?' And the
siituc impulse to show the world a better or idealized a sp ect of ourselves
finds an organized expression in the various professions and cla s se s ,
cacli of which has to some exten t a cant or pose» which its members
lissome unconsciously, for the most part, but which has the effect
of ,t conspiracy to work upon the credulity of (he rest of the world.
There is a cant not only of theology and of philanthropy, but also of
law, medicine, teaching, even of scien cc—perhaps especially of science,
just now since the more u particular kind of merit is recognizcd and
admired, the more it Is likely to be assum ed by the unworthy.1
Thus, when the individual presents himself before others,
liis performance will tend to incorporate and exemplify the
officially accredited values ot the society, more so, in fact,
limn does his behaviour as a whole.
To the degree that a performance highlights the common
official values of the society in which it occurs, >we may look
upon it, in the manner of Durkheim and 1<adcl iffe-Brown, a s a
ceremony—as an expressive rejuvenation and reaffirmation of
the moral values of the community. Furthermore, in so far
as the expressive bias of performances comes to be accepted
a s reality, then that which is accepted at the moment a s reality
will have some of the ch aracteristics of a celebration. To
stay in one’s room away from the place where the party is
given, or away from where the practitioner attends to his client,
is to stay away from where reality is being performed. The
world, in truth, is a wedding.
One of the richest sources of data on the presentation
of idealized performances is the literature on social mobility.
!Dn most societies there seem s to be a major or general system
of stratification, and in most stratified so cieties there is an
idealization of the higher strata and some aspiration on the
part of those in low p laces to move to higher ones. (We must
be careful to appreciate that this involves not merely a desire
for a prestigeful place but also a desire for a place close to
the sacred centre of the common values of the society.)
Commonly we find that upward mobility involves the presentation
of proper performances and that efforts to move upward
and efforts to keep from moving downward are expressed in
term s of sacrifices made for the maintenance of front. Once
1Charles II. Cooley, Human .\alure tiad the Sneial Order (New York- Scribner’s,
1922), pp. 352-353.
23
the proper sign-equipment h as been obtained and familiarity
gained in the management of it, then this equipment can be
used to em bellish and illumine one’s daily performances with
a favourable social style.
P erh ap s the most important piece of sign equipment
asso cia ted with social c la s s c o n s ists of the sta tu s symbols
through which material wealth is expressed. American society
is similar to others in th is regard but seem s to have been
singled out a s an extreme example of wealth-oriented c la s s
structure—perhaps because in America the licence to employ
symbols of wealth and financial capacity to do so are so
widely distributed. Indian society, on the other hand, ’has
sometimes been cited not only as one in which mobility
occurs in term s of ca ste groups, not individuals, but also a s
one in which perform ances tend to establish favourable claim s
regarding non-material values. A recent student of India,
for example, h a s suggested the following:
T he c a s te 9ystem i s far from a rigid system in which th e'p ositio n
of each component i s fixed for aii time. Movement h a s alw ays been
p ossible, and especially so in the middle regions of the hierarchy,
A low c a s te w as able, in a generation or two, to rise to a higher
by adopting vegetarianism and teetotal) sm, and by Sanskritizing its
ritual and pantheon. In short, it took over, a s far a s possible, the
cuscomsj rites, and beliefs of the Brahmins, and the adoption of the
Brahmimc way of life by a low c a s te seems to have been frequent,
though theoretically forbidden.............
The tendency of the lower c a s te s to imitate the higher h as been
a powerful factor in -th e spread of Sanskritic ritual and customs, and
in the achievement of a certain amount of cultural uniformity, not only
throughout the ca s te sc ale but over the entire length and breadth of
India. 1
In fact, of course, «there are many Hindu circles whose members
are much concerned with injecting an expression of wealth,
luxury, and c la s s sta tu s into the performance of their daily
round and who think too little of a e sc e tic purity to bother
affecting it. Correspondingly, there have always been influential
groups in America whose members have felt that
some aspect of every performance ought to play down the
expression of sheer wealth in order to foster the impression
that standards regarding birth, culture, or moral earn estn ess
are the ones that prevail.
P erhaps because of the orientation upward found in major
s o c ieties today, we tend to assum e that the expressive stre s se s
in a performance necessarily claim for the performer a higher
c la s s statu s than might otherw ise be accorded him. For
example, • we are not surprised to learn the following details
of p ast domestic •performances in Scotland:
1M .N .Srinivas, Religion and Society Among the Coorgs of South India
(Oxford: Oxford University P re s s , 1952), p. 30.
24
One thing is fairly certain : the average laird and h is family lived
far more frugally in the ordinary way than they did when they were
entertaining visitors. They would rise to a grear occasion and serve
d ish e s rem iniscent of the banquets of the medieval nobility; but, like
those same nobles, between the festivities they would ‘ keep secret
h o u se ,' a s the saying used to be, and live on the plainest of fare.
T he secret w as well guarded. Even Edward Bure, with ail h i s knowledge
of rhe Highlanders, found it very difficult to describe their
everyday m eals. All he could say definitely w as that whenever they
entertained an Englishman they provided far too much food; “ and," he
remarked, " i t h as often been said they will ransack all their tenants
rather than we should think meanly of their housekeeping; but 1 have
heard it from many whom they have e m p lo y ed ............. that, although
they have been attended at dinner by five or six servants, yet, with
all that sta te , they have often dined upon oatmeal varied several
ways, pickled herring, or other such cheap and indifferent diet." 1
In fact, however, many c la s s e s of persons have had many
different reaso n s for exercising system atic modesty and for
underplaying any expressions of wealth, spiritual strength, or
self-respect. T he ignorant, shiftless, happy-go-lucky manner
which Negroes in the Southern S tates sometimes felt obliged
to affect during interaction with w hites illu stra te s how a
performance can play up ideal values which accord to the
performer a lower position than he covertly accepts for hims
e lf.2 I have been told by Shetlanders that theic grandfathers
used to refrain from improving the appearance of the cottage
lesc the laird take such improvements a s a sign that increased
rents could be extracted from them. A third example may
be quoted from a recent study of the junk business, in which
data are provided on the kind of impression that practitioners
feel it is opportune for them to foster.
. . . . th e junk peddler is vitally interested in keeping information
a s to the true financial value of junk' from the general public. He
w ish e s to perpetuate the myth that junk is v alu eless and that the
individuals who deal in it are down and o u t ’ and should be p itied .3
In a se n se such im pressions are idealized, too, for if the
performer is to be successful he must offer the kind of scene
that rea lizes the o b se rv e rs’ extreme stereotypes of h a p less
poverty. *
‘ Marjorie Plant, The D om estic L ife o f Scotland in the E ighteenth Century
(Edinburgh: Edinburgh University P re ss , 1952), pp. 96-97.
2 A modem version of th is masquerade is described by Charles Johnson,
P atterns o f Negro Segregation (New York: Harper Btos., 1943), p. 273:
'Where there is actual competition above the unskilled levels for
jobs usually thought of a s 1white j o b s ' some Negroes will of their own
choice accept symbols of lower statu s while performing work of higher
rank. Thus a snipping clerk will wear overalls and accept the pay and
title of a porter; a clerk will take the title and pay of a m essenger;
a nurse will permit herself to be called a dom estic; and a chiropodist
will enter the homes of white persons by the back door.’
3 1. B. Ralph, 'T h e Junk B usiness and the Junk P e d d le r' (Unpublished M.A.
Report, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1950), p. 26.
As illustrations of such routines there are perhaps none with so much
sociological charm a s the performance m aintained by street beggars.
In Western Society, however, since Mayhew’s time, the sc e n e s that beggars
25
If an individual is to give expression to ideal standards
during h is performance, then he will have to forgo or conceal
action which i s in co n sisten t with these standards. When th is
inappropriate conduct is itself satisfying in some way, a s is
often the ca se , then one commonly finds ir indulged in secretly,
so that, in a sense, the performer is able to forgo h is cake and
eat it too. For example, in our own society we find that eightyear-old
children claim lack of interest in the television
programmes that are directed to five- and six-year-olds, but
Sometimes surreptitiously watch them. 1 We also find that
m iddle-class housew ives sometim es employ—in a secret and
surreptitious way—cheap substitutes for coffee, ice cream, or
butter; in th is way they can save money, or effort, or time,
and still maintain an impression that the food they serve is of
high quality. 2 The same women may leave The Saturday
Evening Post on their lining room end-table but keep a copy
of True Romance (" It's something the cleaning woman must
have left aro u n d ”) concealed in their bedroom. 3 It h a s been
suggested that the same sort of behaviour, which we may refer
to a s ‘ secret consum ption’, can be found among the Hindus.
They conform to a ii their custom s, while they are seen, but they
are not so scrupulous when in their retirement. 4
I have been credibly informed that some Brahams in small companies,
have gone very secretly to the houses of Sudras whom they could depend
on, to partake of meat and strong liquors, which they indulged in without
scruple. s
sta g e seem to have declined in dramatic merit. Today we hear le s s of
the ’c lean family dodge' in which a family appears in tattered but incredibly
clean clo thes, the faces of the children glistening from a layer
of soap that has been polished with a soft cioch. We no longer see the
perform ances in which a half-naked man chokes over a dirty crust of
bread that he i s apparently too weak to swallow, or the scene in which
a tattered man c h a s e s a sparrow from a piece of bread, wipes the morsel
slowly on h is co at-sleeve, and, apparendy oblivious co the audience
that is now around him, attem pts to e a t it. Rare, too, has become the
*asham ed b egg ar1 who meekly implores with his e y e s what his delicate
se n sib ilitie s apparently prevent him from saying. Incidentally, the
sc e n e s presented by beggars have been variously called, in English,
grifts, dodges, lays, rackets, lurks, pitches, and cap ers—providing us
with rerms well suited to describe performances that have greater
legality and le s s art. For d etails on beggars see Henry Mayhew, London
L abour and the London Poor (4 v o l s .; London: Griffin, Bohn), I (1861),
pp. 415-417, and IV (1862), pp. 404-438.
*Unpuhlished research reports of Social R esearch , Inc., Chicago. I am
grateful to Social R esearch, Inc., for perm ission to use these and other
of their data in this report.
2 Unpublished research reports of Social Research, Inc.
^Reported by P rofessor W. L. Warner of the University of Chicago, in
seminar, 1951.
V b,b* j - A-Dubois, Character, M anners, and Custom s o f the P eople o f
India (2 vols.; Philadelphia': M'Carey & Son, 1818), I, p. 235.
5 Ibid,, p. 237.
26
T he secret use of intoxicating drink is still le s s uncommon than
that of interdicted food, because it is le s s difficult to conceal. Yet
it i s a thing unheard of to meet a Brahmin drunk in p u b lic .1
It may be added that recently the Kinsey reports have added
new impetus to the study and an aly sis of secret consumption. 1
It is important to note chat when an individual offers a
performance he typically conceals something more than inappropriate
p leasures and economies. Some of these m atters
for concealment may be suggested here.
F irst, we sometimes find that in addition to secret
pleasures and economies, the performer may be engaged in a
profitable form of activity that is concealed from his audience
and that is incompatible with the view of his activity which
he hopes they will obtain. T he model here is to be found
with hilarious clarity in the cigar-store-bookie-joinr, but something
of the spirit of these establishm ents can be found in
many places. A surprising number of workers seem to justify
their jobs to them selves by the tools that can be stolen, or
the food-supplies that can be resold, or the travelling that
can be enjoyed on company time, or the propoganda that can
be distributed, or the contacts that can be made and properly
influenced, etc. 3 In all such ca se s, place of work and
official activity come to be a kind of shell which conceals
the spirited life of the performer.
Secondly, we find that errors and m istakes are often
corrected before the performance takes place and, at the same
time, tell-tale sig n s that errors have been made and corrected
are them selves concealed. In this way an impression of
infallibility, so important in many presentations, may be
maintained. There is a famous remark that doctors bury
their m istakes. Another example is found in a recent dissertation
on social interaction in three government offices,
which suggests that officers disliked dictating reports to
a stenographer because they liked to go back over their reports
1Dubois, op. c it., p. 238.
2 A s Adam Smith suggested, op. cit., p. 88, virtues a s well a s vices may
be c o n c e a le d :
'V a in men often give them selves airs of a fashionable profligacy, which,
in their hearts, they do not approve of, and of which, perhaps, they are
really not guilty. They desire to be praised for what they them selves
do not think praiseworthy, and are ashamed of unfashionable virtues,
which they som etim es p ractise in secret, and for which they have secretly
some degree of real veneration.'
3 Two recent students of the social service worker suggest the term
'o u tsid e ra c k e t' to refer to secret sources of income available to the
Chicago Public C ase Worker. See Earl Bogdanoff and Arnold G lass,
The Sociology o f the P ublic C ase Worker in an Urban Area, unpublished
M aster's Report, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953-
27
and correcc the flaw s before a stenographer, let alone a
superior, saw the reports. 1
Thirdly, in those interactions where the individual prese
n ts a product to others, he will tend to show them only
th e end-product, and they will be led i d c o judging him on the
b asis of something that has been finished, polished, and
packaged. In some ca se s, if very little effort was actually
required to complete the object, this fact will be concealed.
In other ca se s, it will be the long, ted io u s hours of lonely
labour that will be hidden. For example, the urbane style
affected in some scholarly books can be instructively compared
with the feverish drudgery the author may have endured in
order to complete the index on time and the squabbles he
may have had with his publisher in order to in crease the
siz e of the first letter of his last name a s it appears on the
cover of his book.
A fourth discrepancy between appearances and overall
reality may be cited. We find that there are many performances
which could not have been given had not casks been done
which were physically unclean, sem i-illegal, cruel, and degrading
in ocher w ays; but these disturbing faces are seldom
expressed during a performance. In H ughes’ cerms, we tend
to conceal from our audience all evidence of 'd irty work,’
whether we do this work in private or allocate co a servanc,
co the impersonal market, co a legitimace specialist, or co
an illegitim ate one.
Closely connected with the notion of dircy work is a
fifth discrepancy becween appearance and actual accivicy.
We find chat if die accivicy of an individual is co embody
several ideal scandards, then in order to make a good showing
it is likely that some of these scandards will be sustained in
public by che privace sacrifice of some of che ochers. Ofcen,
of course, che performer will sacrifice those standards whose
lo s s can be concealed and will make chis sacrifice in order
co main'cain those standards whose inadequate applicacion
could not be concealed. Thus, if a service is judged on
che b asis of speed and quality, qualicy is likely co fall before
speed because poor quality can be concealed but not slow
service. Similarly, if accendants in a mental ward are to
maintain order and ac the same time noc hit paciencs, and if
this combinacion of scandards is difficulc co maincain, chen
the unruly pacienc may be 'n e c k e d ' wich a wet cowel and
choked into submission in a way chac leav es no visible evidence
of miscreacmenc. Absence of miscreacmenc can be
l Blau, op. cit., p. 184.
28
faked, not order. 1 Here it would be incorrect to be too
cynical. Often we find that if the principal ideal aim s of
an organization are to be achieved, then it will be n ecessary
at tim es to bypass momentarily other ideals of the organization,
while maintaining the impression that th ese other id eals
are still iti force. In such c a s e s , a sacrifice is made not
for the most visible ideal but rather for the most legitim ately
important one. 2
Finally, we find performers ■often foster the impression
that they had ideal motives for acquiring the role in which
they are performing, that they have ideal qualifications for
the role, and that it was not necessary for them to suffer
any indignities, insults, and humiliations, or make any tacitlyunderstood
'd e a ls ,' in order to acquire the role. (While this
general impression of sacred comparability between the man
and his job is perhaps most commonly fostered by members
of the higher professions, a similar element is found in many
other fostered im pressions.) Reinforcing th ese ideal im pressions
we find a kind of 'rh e to ric of training,' whereby labour
unions, universities, trade asso ciatio n s, and other licensing
bodies require practitioners to absorb a mystical range and
period of training, in part to maintain a monopoly, but in
part to foster the impression that the licenced practitioner
is someone set apart from other men. 3 And so we find that
1Robert II.Willoughby, The A ttendant in the State Mental H ospital (unpublished
M aster's T hesis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago,
1953), p. 44. Willoughby adds, pp. 45-46:
'T h o s e rules, regulations, and orders which are most easily enforced
are those which leave tangible evidence of having been either obeyed
or disobeyed, such a s rules pertaining to the cleaning of the ward, locking
doors, the use of intoxicating liquors while on duty, the use of restraints,
etc. ’
2 An illustration is provided in a recent paper on the N av y : C harles Hunt
Page, 'B u reaucracy’s Other F a c e ,’ S ocial fo r c e s , XXV, p. 90:
'T h i s characteristic (group-imposed secrecy) is nor entirely attributable,
by any means, to the fear of the members that unsavoury elem ents will
be brought to light. While this fear always plays some role in keeping
off the record the ’ inside p ic tu re ’ of any bureaucracy, it is to one of the
features of rhe informal structure itself that more importance must be
assigned. For the informal structure _serves the very significant role
o f providing a channel o f circum vention of the formally prescribed rules
and methods of procedure. No organization feels that it can afford
to publicize those methods (by which certain problems are solved, it
is important to note) which arc antithetical to the officially sanctioned
and, in this case, strongly sanctified methods dear to the traditions of
the group. ’
3 Anthony fteinlein, Pharmacy as a P rofession in W isconsin (unpublished
Master's T h esis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1943),
reports, p. 89, that pharm acists feel the fouryear university course required
for license is 'g oo d for the pro fession ' but that some admit that a few
months of training is all that is really needed. The American army during
World War 11 innocently treated trades such as pharmacy and_ watchrepairing
in a purely instrumental way and trained efficient practitioners
in five or six weeks to the horror of established members of these trades.
29
clergymen give the impression that they entered the church
because of a call of felt vocation, in America tending to
conceal their interest in moving up socially, in Britain tending
to conceal their interest in not moving too far down. And
again, clergymen tend to give the impression that they have
chosen their current congregation because of what they can
offer it spiritually and not, a s may in fact be the case, because
the elders offered a good house or full payment of moving
expenses. Similarly, medical schools in America tend to
recruit their students partly on the b asis of ethnic origins,
and certainly patients, consider th is factor in choosing their
doctors; but in the actual interaction between doctor and
patient the impression is allowed to develop that the doctor
i s . a doctor because of special aptitudes a s well a s special
training. Similarly, ex ecutives often project an air of competency
and general grasp of the situation, blinding them selves
and others to the fact that they hold their jobs partly because
they look like executives, not because they can work like
executives. 1 Performers may even attempt to give the impression
that their present poise and proficiency are something
they have alw ays had and that they have never had to fumble
their way through a learning period.
Interestingly enough, when the significance of unofficial
qualifications becomes a scandal or political issu e, then a
few individuals who are obtrusively lacking in the informal
qualifications may be admitted with fanfare and given a highly
v isib le role a s evidence of fair play. An impression of
legitim acy is thus created. 2
I have suggested that a performer tends to conceal or
underplay those activ ities, facts, and motives which are incom
patible with an idealized version of himself and his
products. In addition, a performer often engenders in his
audience the belief that he is related to them in a more ideal
way than i s always the case. Two general illustrations
may be cited.
‘ See, for example, Perrin Stryker, 'H ow Executives Get J o b s ,’ Fortune,
August, 1953, p. 182:
Few executives realize how critically important their physical appearance
may be to an employer. Placem ent expert Ann 11off observes that employers
now seem to be looking for an ideal ’ Hollywood type.’ One
company rejected a candidate because he had 'te e th that were too sq u a re ’
and others have been disqualified because their ears stuck out, or they
drank and smoked too heavily during an interview. Racial and religious
requirements also are often frankly stipulated by em ployers.1
2 See, for example, William Kornhauser, ‘ The Negro Union O fficial: A study
of Sponsorship and Control,’ American Journal o f Sociology, LV11,
pp. 443-452, and Scott Greer, 'S itu ated P re ss u re s and Functional Role
of Ethnic Labor L ead ers,’ Social F orces, XXXU, pp.41-45.
30
F irst, individuals often foster the impression chat the
routine they are presently performing is their only routine or
ac le a st their most essential one. As previously suggested,
the audience, in their turn, often assum e that the character
projected before them is all there is to the individual who
a c ts out the projection for them. As suggested in the wellknown
quotation from William Jam es:
. . . . we may practically say that he h a s a s many different social
selves a s there are distinct groups of persons about whose opinion
he cares. He generally shows a different side o f himself to each
of th e s e different groups. Many a youth who is demure enough before
his parents and teachers, sw ears and swaggers like a pirate among
h is 'to u g h ' young friends. We do not show ourselves to our children
as to our club companions, to o u t customers a s to the labourers we
employ, to our own m asters and employers a s to our intimate friends. 1
As both effect and enabling ca u se of this kind of commitment to
the part one is currently performing, we find that audience segregation
o ccu rs; by audience segregation the individual ensu
res that those before whom he plays one of his parts will not
be the sam e individuals before whom h e plays a different
part in another setting. Audience segregation a s a device
for protecting fostered im pressions will be considered later.
Here I would like only to note that even if performers attempted
to break down th is segregation, and the illusion that is
fostered by it, audiences would often prevent such action.
The audience can se e a great saving of time and emotional
energy in the right to treat the performer at occupational
faee-value, a s if the performer were all and only what his
uniform claimed him to be. 2 Urb^n life would become unbearably
sticky for some if every contact between two
individuals entailed a sharing of personal trials, worries,
and secrets. T h u s if a man wants to be served a restful
dinner, he may seek the service of a w aitress rather than a
wife.
Secondly, performers tend to foster the impression that
their current performance of their routine and cheir relationship
to their current audience have something special and unique
about them. T he routine character of the performance is
obscured (the performer himself is typically unaware of just
how routinized his performance really is) and the spontaneous
as p ec ts of the situation are stressed. The medical performer
provides an obvious example. As one writer su g g ests:
. . . . he must sim ulate a memory. The patient, conscious of the
unique importance of the events occurring within him, remembers
1 William James, The P hilosophy o f William Jam es (Modern Library ed.;
New York : Random House, n. d.), pp. 128-129-
2 1 am grateful to Warren Peterson for this and other suggestions.
31
everything and, in bis delight in telling the doctor about it, suffers
from 'com plete recall.’ The patient can’t believe that the doctor
d o esn ’t remember too, and h is pride is deeply wounded if the latrer
allow s him to perceive that h e d o esn ’t carry in the forefront of his
mind precisely what kind of tab lets he prescribed on his last visit,
how many of them to be taken and when. 1
Similarly, a s a recent study of Chicago doctors suggests, a
general practitioner p resen ts a sp ecialist to a patient as the
b est choice on technical grounds, but in fact the specialist
may have been chosen partly because of collegial tie s with
the referring doctor, or because of a split-fee arrangement, or
because of some other clearly defined quid pro quo between the
two medical men. 2 In our commercial life th is characteristic
of performances has been exploited and maligned under the
rubric 'p erso n alized se rv ic e ;’ in other areas of life we make
jokes about 't h e bed-side manner’ or 't h e glad hand.’ (We
often neglect to mention chat a s performers in the role of client
we tactfully uphold this personalizing effect by attem pting to
give the impression that we have not 's h o p p e d ’ for the service
and would not consider obtaining it elsew here.) P erh ap s it
is our guilt that has directed our attention to th e se areas of
cra ss pseudo-gemeinschaft, for there is hardly a performance,
in whatever area of life, which does not rely on the personal
touch to exaggerate the uniqueness of the transactions between
performer and audience. For example, we feel a slight disappointment
when we hear a clo se friend, whose spontaneous
gestures of warmth we felt were our own preserve, talk
intim ately with another of his friends (especially one whom
we do not know). 3
^ . E i M . J o a d , 'O n Doctors,' The N ew Statesm an and Nation, March 7,
1953, pp. 255-256.
2 Solomon, op. cil., p. 146.
3 An explicit statem ent of th is i s given in an early American guide to
manners, The Canons o f Good B reeding: or the Handbook o f the Man o f
F ashion (Philadelphia : L ee and Blanchard, 1839), p. 87:
' I f you have paid a compliment to one man, or have used toward him any
expression of particular civility, you should not show the same conduct
to any other person in his presence. For example, if a gentlem an comes
to your house and you tell him with warmth and in terest that you 'a r e
glad to se e him,’ h e will be pleased with the attention, and will probably
thank you; but if he hears you say the same thing to twenty other people,
he will not only perceive that your courtesy was worth nothing, bur he
will feel some resentment at having been imposed on.'
32
Maintenance of Expressive Control
It has been suggested that the performer can rely upon
his audience to accept minor cu es a s a sign of something
important about his performance. T h is convenient fact has an
inconvenient implication. By virtue of the same sign-accepcing
tendency, the audience may misunderstand the meaning that a
cue was designed to convey, or may read an em barrassing
meaning into gestures or events that were accidental, inadvertent,
incidental or not meant by the performer co carry
any meaning whatsoever.
In response to these communication contingencies, p e rformers
commonly attempt to exert a kind of synecdochic
responsibility, making sure that a s many as possible of the
minor events in the performance, however instrumentally inconsequential
th ese events may be, will occur in such a way
a s to convey either no impression or an impression that is
compatible and consistent with the overall definition of the
situation that is being fostered. When the audience is known
to be secretly sceptical of the reality that i s being impressed
upon them, we have been ready to appreciate their tendency
to pounce on trifling flaw s as a sign that the whole show is
false; but a s students of social life we have been le s s ready
to appreciate that even sympathetic audiences can be momentarily
disturbed, shocked, and weakened in their faith by the
discovery of a picayune discrepancy in the im pressions
presented to them. Some of these minor accidents and 'unm eant
g es tu re s' happen to be so aptly designed to give an impression
that contradicts the one fostered by the performer that the
audience cannot help but be startled from a proper degree of
involvement in the interaction, even though the audience may
realize that in the last an aly sis the discordant event is really
m eaningless and ought to be completely overlooked. T he
crucial point is not that the fleeting definition of the situation
cau sed by an unmeant gesture is itself so blameworthy but
rather merely that it is different from the definition officially
projected. T h is difference forces an acutely embarrassing
wedge between the official projection and reality, for it is part
of the official projection that it is the only possible one under
the circum stances. Perhaps, then, we should not analyze
performances in terms of mechanical standards, by which a
large gain can offset a small loss, •or a large weight a smaller
one. Artistic imagery would be more accurate, for it prepares
u s for the fact that a single note off key can disrupt che tone
of an entire performance.
33
In our society, some unmeant gestures ock'ur in such ;i
wide variety of performances and convey im pressions that are
in general so incompatible with the ones being fostered that
these inopportune events have acquired collective symbolic
status. Three rough groupings of these events may be
mentioned. F irst, a performer may accidentally convey incapacity,
impropriety, or disrespect by momentarily losing
muscular control of himself. He may trip, stumble, fall ; he
may belch, yawn, make a slip of the tongue, scratch himself,
o r.b e flatulent; he may accidentally impinge upon the body
of another participant. Secondly, the performer may net in
such a way a s to give the impression that he is too much or
too little concerned with the interaction. lie may stutter,
forget his lines, appear nervous, or guilty, or selfconscious;
he may give way to inappropriate outbursts of laughter, anger,
or other kinds of affect which momentarily incapacitate him
as an interact ant ; he may show too much serious involvement
and interest, or too little. Diirily, the performer may allow
h is presentation to suffer from inadequate dramaturgical
ilirection. The setting may not have been put in order, or may
have become readied for the wrong performance, or may become
deranged during the performance; unforeseen contingencies
may ca u se improper timing of die performer’s arrival or
departure or may ca u se em barrassing lulls to occur during the
interaction. 1
Perform ances differ, of course, in the degree of item by
item expressive care required of them. In the case of some
cultures foreign to us, we are ready to see a high degree of
expressive coherence. Granet, for example, 'su g g ests this of
filial performances in C hina:
Their fine toilet is in itself a homage. Tlicir good Jeponmcnt will
be accounted an offering of respect. In the presence of parents, gravity
is requisite : one must therefore be careful not to belch, to sneeze, to
cough, to yawn, to blow o n e 's nose nor to spit. It.very expectoration
would run rlie risk of soiling rhe parernal sanctity. It would be a crime
to show the lining of o n e's garments, lo show the father that one is
treating him as a chief, one ought alw ays to stand in his presence, the
ry e s right, the body upright upon the two legs, never daring to lean
1One way of handling inadvertent disruptions is for the intcractants to
laugh at them a s a si^n thar rhe expressive implications of the disruptions
have been understood but not taken seriously. Assuming this, Ucr^son's
e ssay on laughter can be raken as a description of the ways in which we
expect the performer ro adhere to human cap acities for movement, of the
tendency for the audience to impure these capacities to the performer
from the start of the in f ra c tio n , and of the ways in which this effective
projection i s disrupted when the performer moves in a non-human fashion.
Similarly, Freud’s essay on wit and the psychopathology of everyday life
can be taken, at one level, as a description of the ways in which we
expect performers ro have achieved certain standards of tact, modesty,
and virtue, and a s a description of ways in which th ese effective pro*
jections can be discredited by slips that are hilarious to the layman hut
symptomatic to analy sts.
34
upon any object, nor to bend, nor to stand on one foot. It is tlgus that
with the low ami humble voice which becomes a follower, one comes
night and morning to pay homage. After which, one waits for orders. 1
Vte are also to see that In scenes involving high personages
in symbolically important actions, 'co n sisten cy , too, will be
demanded. ■ Sir Frederick Ponsonby, late Equerry at the
British Court, -writes:
'Vhen 1 attended a 'C o u r t' 1 was always struck by the incongruous
music the band played, and determined to do what 1 could to have this
remedied. T he majority of the Household, being quite unm usical,
clamoured for popular airs . . . . 1 argued that these popular airs
robbed the ceremony of all dignity. A presentation at Court was often
a grear event in a la d y 's life, but if she went past the King and Queen
to the tune of 'H i s nose ’«as redder than it w as,' the whole impression
was spoilr. 1 maintained that minuets and old-fashioned airs» operatic
music with a ' mysterious 1 touch, were what was wanted. 2
1 also took up the question of the music played by the band of
the guard of honour at investitu res and wrote to the Senior Bandmaster,
Captain Rogan, on the subject. What I disliked was seeing eminent
men being knighted while comic songs were being played by the band
o u t s i d e ; also when the Home Secretary was reading out impressively
some particularly h?roic deed which had been performed by a man who
was to receive rhe Albert Medal, the baud outside played a two-step,
which robbed rhe whole ceremony of any dignity. I suggested operatic
music of a dramatic nature being played, and he entirely agreed . . . .■*
Similarly, at m iddle-class American funerals, a hearse driver,
decorously dressed in black and tactfully located at the outskirts
of the cemetery during the service, -may be allowed to
smoke, but he is likely to shock and anger the b ereav ed 'if
he happens to flick his cigarette stub into a bush, letting it
describe an elegant arc, ■instead of circum spectly dropping
it at his feet. 4
In addition to our appreciation of the consistency required
on sacred occasions, we readily appreciate that during secular
conflicts, especially high-level conflicts, each protagonist
will have to watch his own conduct carefully lest he give
the opposition a vulnerable point at which to direct criticism.
Thus, Dale, in discussing the work contingencies of higher
civil servants, su g g ests:
An even closer scrutiny (than that accorded to statements) is
applied to drafts of official le tte rs: for an incorrect statement or an
unhappy phrase in a letter of which the substance is perfectly harm less
and rhe subject unimportant may cover the Department with coofusion
if it happens to be seized on by one of the many persons to whom
the most trivial mist ke of a Government Department is a dainry dish
ro se t before the public. Three or four years of this d isc ip lin e during
the still receptive y ears from twenty «four ro twenty-eight suffuse the
mind and character permanently with a passion for precise facts and
close inferences, and wirh a grim distrust of vague g e n e ra litie s.5
1 Marcel Granet, C hinese C ivilization, trans. tnnes and Brailsford (London:
Kegan Paul, 1930), p. 328.
2 Ponsouby, op. cit, t pp. 182-183.
3 /6irf.p p. 183.
4 llabenstein, forthcoming work previously cited.
5 Dale, op. ci*., p. 81.
35
In spice of our w illingness to appreciate the expressive
requirements of chese several kinds of sicuacions, we tend
co se e th ese situations as special c a s e s ; we tend to blind
ourselves co the fact that everyday secular performances
in our own Anglo-American society must often p a s s a strict
te st of aptness, fitness, propriety, .and decorum. Perhaps this
blindness is partly due to the fact that a s performers we are
often more conscious of the standards which we might have
applied to our activity buc have noc than of the standards we
unthinkingly apply. In any case, a s students we must be ready
to examine the dissonance created by a misspelled word, or by
a slip that is noc quite concealed by a skirt; and we m ust be
ready to appreciate why a near-sighted plumber, to protect the
impression of rough strength that is de rigueur in his profession,
.fe e ls it necessary to sweep his sp ectacles into his
pocket,w hen the housewife’s approach changes h is work into
a performance, or why a television repairman is advised by
h is public relations counsels thac che screw s he fails co puc
back inco the set should be kepc alongside his own so chat
the unrepiaced parts will not give an improper impression.
In other words, .we must be prepared to s e e that the impression
of reality fostered by a performance is a delicate, fragile thing
that can be shattered by very minor mishaps.
T he expressive coherence that is required in performances
points out a crucial discrepancy between our all-too-human
se lv es and our socialized selv es. As human beings we are
presumably creatures of variable impulse with moods and
energies that change from one moment to the next. As
characters put on for an audience, however, we must not be
su b ject to ups and downs. As Durkheim suggested, we <lo
not allow our higher social activity ‘ to follow in the trail
of our bodily sta te s, a s our sensations and our general bodily
co n scio u sn ess do.1 1 A certain bureaucratization of the
spirit is expected so that we can be relied upon to give a
perfectly homogeneous performance at every appointed time.
As Santayana suggests, the socialization process not only
transfigures, it fix es:
But whether the visage we assum e be a joyful or a sad one, in
adopting and emphasizing it we define our sovereign temper. Henceforth,
90 long as we continue under the spell of this self-knowledge,
we do not merely live but a c t; we compose and play our chosen
chajracrer, we wear the buskin of deliberation, we defend and idealize
our p assio n s, we encourage ourselv es eloquently to be what we are,
devoted or scornful or c a re le s s or au stere; we soliloquize (before an
imaginary audience) and we wrap ourselves gracefully in the mantle
of our inalienable part. So draped, we solicit applause and expect
l Emile Durkheim. The E lem entary Forms o f the R eligious L ife, trans.
J. W.Swain (London : Allen & Unwin» 1926), p. 272.
36
to die amid a universal hush. We profess to live up to the fine sentim
ents we have uttered, as we try to believe in the religion we profess.
T h e greater our difficulties the greater our zeal. Under our published
principles and plighted language we must assiduously hide all the
inequalities of our moods and conduct, and this without hypoctisy,
since out deliberate character is more Duly ourself than is the flux
of our involuntary dreams. T he portrait we paint in th is way and
exhibit a s our true person may well be in the grand manner, with column
and curtain and d istant landscape and finger pointing to the terrestial
globe or to the Yorick-skull of philosophy; but if th is style i s native
to u s and our art i s vital, the more it transmutes it s model th e deeper
and truer art it will be. The severe bust of an archaic sculpture,
scarcely humanizing the block, will express a spirit far more justly
than the man’s dull morning looks or casual grimaces. Every one
who is sure of b is mind, or proud of his office, or anxious about his
duty assum es a tragic mask. He deputes it to be himself and transfers
to it almost all his vanity. While still alive and subject, like all
existing things, to the undermining flux of h is own substance, he
h as crystallized h is soul into an idea, and more in pride than in sorrow
he h as offered up his life on the altar of the Muses. Self-knowledge,
like any art or science, renders its subject-m atter in a new medium,
rhe medium of ideas, in which it lo se s irs old dimensions and i t s old
place. Our animal habits are transmuted by conscience into loyalties
and duties, and we become ' p e rso n s’ or m asks. 1
And if our social front helps u s to sustain a worthy social
note, we must, a s Simone de Beauvoir says, live up to the
fixed character of our inanimate sign equipment.
Even if each woman d re ss e s in conformity with her status, a game
is still being played: artifice, like art, belongs to the realm of the
imaginary* It is nor only that girdle, brassiere^ hair-dye, make-up
disguise body and face; but that the leasr sophisticate«] of women,
once she is d ressed ,' does not present herself to observation; she is,
like the picture or the srarue, or the actor on the stage, an agent
through whom is suggested someone not there—that is, the character
sh e represents, but is not. It is this identification with something
unreal, fixed, perfect as the hero of a novel, a s a portrait or a bust,
that gratifies her; she strives ro identify herself with this figure and
thus to seem to herself to be stabilized, justified in her splendor. 2
Misrepresentation
It was suggested earlier that an audience is able to orient
itself in a situation by accepting performed cu es on faith,
treating th ese signs a s evidence of something greater than
or different from the sign-vehicles them selves. If this tendency
of the audience to accept signs places the performer
in a position to be misunderstood and makes it necessary
for him to exercise expressive care regarding everything he
does when before the audience, so also this sign-accepting
tendency puts the audience in a position to be duped and
misled, for there are few sig n s that cannot be used to
attest to the presence of something that is not really there.
And it is plain that many performers have ample capacity
1 Santayana, op. cit., pp. 133-134.
2 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, trans. H. M. Parshley (New York*
Knopf, 1953), p. 533-
37
and motive to m isrepresent the fa c ts; only shame, guilt, or
fear prevent them from doing so. ■
A s members of the audience it is natural for u s to feel
that the impression the performer se ek s to give may be true
or false, genuine or spurious, valid or 'phony.' So common
is this social doubt that observers often give special attention
to features of the performance that cannot be readily manipulated,
■thus enabling them selves to judge the reliability
of the more m isrepresentable cu es in the performance. (Scientific
police work and projective testing are extreme examples
o f the application of th is tendency.) And if we grudgingly
allow certain symbols of sta tu s to establish a performer’s right
to a given treatment, we are alw ays ready to pounce on chinks
in h is symbolic armour in order to discredit his pretensions.
When we think of those who present a false front or 'o n ly '
a front, of those who dissem ble, deceive, and defraud, we
think of a descrepancy between fostered appearances and
reality. We also think of the precarious position in which
th e se performers p lace them selves, for at any moment in their
performance an event may occur to catch them out and baldly
contradict what they have openly avowed, bringing them
immediate humiliation and sometimes permanent lo ss of
reputation. We often feel that it is just these terrible eventualities,
which arise from being caught out, flagrante delicto,
in a patent act of misrepresentation, that an honest performer
i s able to avoid. T h is common-sense view h as limited analytical
utility.
Sometimes when we ask whether a fostered impression
is true or false we really mean to ask whether or not the
performer is authorized to give the performance in question,
and we are not primarily concerned with the actual performance
itself. When we discover that someone with whom we have
dealings is an im postor and out-and-out fraud, we are d isc o v er
ing that he did not have the right to play the part he played,
that he w as not an accredited incumbent of the relevant status.
We assum e that the impostor’s performance, in addition to the
fact that it m isrepresents him, will be at fault in other ways,
but often his masquerade is discovered before we can detect
any other difference between the false performance and the
legitim ate one which it sim ulates. Paradoxically, the more
closely the impostor’s performance approximates to the real
thing, the more intensely we may be threatened, for a competent
performance by someone who proves to be an impostor may
weaken in our minds the sacred connection between legitim ate
38
authorization to play a part and the capacity to play it. (Skilled
mimics, who admit all along that their intentions are unserious,
seem to provide one way in which we can 'work through'
some of th ese anxieties.)
The social definition of impersonation, however, is not
itself a very consistent thing. For exam ple,'While it is felt
to be an inexcusable crime against communication to impersonate
someone of sacred status, such as a doctor or a
priest, we are often le ss concerned when someone im personates
a member of a disesteem ed, non-crucial, profane status, such
a s that of a hobo or unskilled worker. When a disclosure
shows that we have been participating with a performer who
has a higher sta tu s than he led us to believe, there is good
C hristian precedent for our reacting with wonderment and
chagrin rather than with hostility. Mythology and our popular
m agazines, in fact, are full of romantic sto ries in which the
villain and the hero both make fraudulent claim s that are
discredited in the last chapter, the villain proving not to have
a high status, the hero proving not to have a low one.
Further, while we may take a harsh view of performers
such a s confidence men who knowingly m isrepresent every
fact about their lives, we may have some sympathy for those
who have but one fatal flaw and who attempt to conceal the
fact that they are, for example, ex-convicts, deflowered,
epileptic or racially impure, instead of admitting their fault
and making an honourable attempt to live it down. Also, we
distinguish between impersonation of a specific, concrete
individual, which we usually feel is quite inexcusable, and
impersonation of category membership, which we may feel
l e s s strongly about. So, too, we often feel differently about
those who misrepresent them selves to forward what they feel
are the just claim s of a collectivity, or those who misrepresent
them selves accidentally or for a lark, than about those who
m isrepresent them selves for private psychological or material
gain*
Finally, since there are sen ses in which the concept of
' a s ta tu s ’ is not clear-cut, so there are se n ses in which the
concept of impersonation is not clear either. For example,
we obviously find that there are many sta tu se s in which
membership is not subject to formal ratification. Claims to
be a law graduate can be established a s valid or invalid, but
claims to be a friend, a true believer, or a music lover can be
confirmed or disconfirmed only more-or-less. Where standards
of competence are not objective, and where bona fide practi-
39
tioners are not collectively organized to protect their mandate,
an individual may style himself an expert and be penalized
by nothing stronger than sniggers.
All of th ese sources of confusion are instructively illu strated
in the variable attitude we have toward the handling of
age and sexual status. It i s a culpable thing for a fifteenyear-old
boy who drives a car or drinks in a tavern to represent
himself as being eighteen, but there are many social contexts
in which it would be improper for a woman not to misrepresent
herself as being more youthful and sexually attractive than is
really the ca se . When we say a particular woman is not really
a s well-formed a s she appears tp be and that the sam e woman
is not really a physician although she appears to be, we are
using different conceptions of the term 're a lly .’ F u rth e r
m odifications of one’s personal front that are considered
misrepresencative one year may be considered merely decorative
a few years later, and th is d issen su s may be found at any one
time between one sub-group in our society and others. For
example, very recently the concealm ent of grey hair by dyeing
has come to be considered acceptable, although there still are
se cto rs of the populace which consider this to be imperm
issible. 1 It is felt to be all right for immigrants to
im personate native Americans in d ress and in patterns of
decorum but £a«L it is still a doubtful matter to Americanize
one’s n a m e 2 or one’s nose. 3
L et us try another approach to the understanding of misrepresentation.
An 'o p e n ,’ 'f l a t , ’ or barefaced lie may be
defined as one for which there can be unquestionable evidence
th at the teller knew he lied and wilfully did so. A claim to
have been at a particular place at a particular time, wiien this
was not the case, is an example. (Some kinds of impersonation,
but not all, involve such lies, and many such lie s do not
involve impersonation.) T hose caught out in the a c t nf telling
barefaced lie s not only lo se face during the interaction but
in a se n se may have their face destroyed, for it is felt by
many audiences that if an individual can once bring himself
to tell such a lie, he ought never again to be fully trusted.
However, there are many 'w h ite lie s ,' told by doctors, potential
gu ests and others, presumably to save the feelings of
•S ee, for example, 'T im a ir,' Fortune, November 1951, p. 102.
2 See, for example, II.L . Mencken, T he A m erican Language (4th e d . ; New
York: Knopf, 1936), pp. 474-525.
3 See, for example, 'P l a s t ic Surgery,’ E bony, May, 1949, and F . C. Macgtegor
and^B.Schaffner, 1Screening P a tie n ts foe Nasal P la stic O perations: Some
Sociological and P sychiatric C onsid eratio ns,' P sychosom atic M edicine,
XII, pp. 277-291.
40
the audience that i s lied to, and th e se kinds of untruths are
not thought to be horrendous. (Such lie s, meant to protect
others rather than to defend the self, will be considered again
later.) Further, in everyday life it i s usually possible for
the performer to create intentionally almost any kind of false
impression without putting himself tn the indefensible position
of having told a clear-cut lie. Communication techniques
such a s innuendo, strategic ambiguity, and crucial om issions
allow the misinformer to profit from lie s without, technically,
telling any. 1
Formal recognition h as been given to the shadings between
lie s and truths and to the em barrassing difficulties caused
by this continuum. Organizations such a s real estate boards
develop explicit codes specifying the degree to which doubtful
im pressions can be given by overstatem ent, under-statement,
and o m is sio n s.2 The Civil Service in Britain apparently
operates on a similar understanding:
The rule here (as regards ' statem ents which are intended or are
likely to beevme p u b lic ’) is sim ple. Nothing may be said which is
not true: but it is a s unnecessary a s it is sometimes undesirable,
even in the public interest, to say everything relevant which is true;
and the facts fiven may be arranged in any convenient order. It is
wonderful what can be done within th ese lim its by a skilful draftsman.
It mi/sh’’. be s a ij, cynically, but with some measure of truth, that the
perfect reply to an em barrassing question in the House of Commons is
one that is brief, appears to answer the question completely, i f
challenged can be proved to be accurate in every word, give? no opening
for awkward ' su p p le m e n ta ries/ and d isc lo s e s really nothing.^
The law cro sscu ts many ordinary social niceties by introducing
ones of its own. In America}) law, intent, negligence, and
strict liability are distinguished; m isrepresentation is held
to be an intentional act, but one that can arise through word
or deed, ambiguous statement or m isleading literal truth, nondisclosure
or prevention of discovery. 4 Culpable non-disclosure
is held to vary, depending on the area of life, there being one
standard for the advertising business and another standard for
professional counsellors. Further, the law tends to hold that:
A representation made with an honest belief in its truth may still
be negligent, because of lack of reasonable care in ascertaining the
1A. clear illustration of this i s given in the L angs' study of Mac Arthur’s
entrance of Chicago during the 1952 Republican National Convention.
They provide a detailed contrast between the actual reception accorded
MacArthur and the edited version of it that appeared on television. See
Kurt and G. H. Lang, *The Unique Perspective of Television and its Effect *.
A P ilot Study,' American Sociological R eview , XVIII, pp. 3-12.
2 See, for example, E .C . Hughes, 'Study of a Secular Institu tion ' The
Chicago Real E state Board' (unpublished P h .D . dissertation. Department
of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1928), p. 85.
3 Dale, op. c il.t p. 105-
4 Sec William L . Prosser, Handbook o f the Law o f Torts (Hornbook Series;
St. Haul, Minn.: West Publishing Co., 1941), p p .701-776.
41
facts, or in the manner of expression, or absence of the skill and
competence required by a particular bu sin e ss or profession. 1
. . . . the fact that the defendant was disinterested, that he had the
b est of motives, and that he thought he was doing the plaintiff a
kindness, will not absolve him from liability so long a s he did in fact
intend to m islead. 2
When we turn from outright im personations and barefaced
lie s to other types of misrepresentation, the common-sense
distinction between true and false im pressions becomes even
le s s tenable. We find that charlatan professional activity
of one decade becomes an acceptable legitim ate occupation
in the next. 3 We find that a c tiv itie s which are thought to
be legitim ate by some audiences in our society are thought
by other audiences to be rackets.
More important, we find that there is hardly a legitim ate
everyday vocation or relationship whose performers do not
engage in concealed practices which are incompatible with
fostered im pressions. Although particular performances,
and even particular parts or routines, may p lace a performer
in a position of having nothing to hide, somewhere in the
full round of his activ itie s there will be something he cannot
treat openly. T he larger the number of m atters and the larger
the number of acting parts which fall within the domain of the
role or relationship, the more likelihood, it would seem, for
points of secrecy to exist. T hus in w ell-adjusted marriages,
we expect that each partner may keep from the other secrets
having to do with financial matters, past experiences, current
flirtations, in d u lg e n c e s in 'b a d ’ or exp en sive habits, personal
aspirations and worries, actions of children, true opinions
held about relatives or mutual friends, etc, < With such
strategically located points of reticence, it is possible to
maintain a desirable status quo in the relationship without
having to carry out rigidly the im plications of this agreement
in all areas of life.
P erhaps most important of all, we must note that a false
impression m aintained by an individual in any one of his
routines may be a threat to the whole relationship or role of
which the routine is only one part, for a discreditable disclosure
in one area of an individual's activity will throw doubt
on the many are as of activity in which he may have nothing
1Prosser, op. cit., p. 733.
2 Ibid., p. 728.
3 See Harold D. McDowell, O steopathy i A Study o f a Semi-orthodox H ealing
A gency and the R ecruitm ent o f its C lientele, unpublished Master's T h esis
Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1951.
* See, for example, David D ressier, 'What Don't They T ell Each Other,*
T his Beek, September 13, 1953.
42
to conceal. Similarly, if the individual has only one thing
to conceal during a performance, and even if the likelihood of
disclosure occurs only at a particular turn or phase in the
performance, the performer’s anxiety may well extend to the
whole performance.
In previous sections of this chapter some general characteristics
of performance were suggested: activity oriented
towards work-tasks tends to be converted into activity oriented
towards communication; the front behind which the routine is
presented is also likely to be suitable for other, somewhat
different routines aad so is likely not to fit completely any
particular routine; sufficient self-control is exerted so as to
maintain a working con sen su s; an idealized impression is
offered by accentuating certain facts and concealing others;
expressive coherence is maintained by the performer taking
more care to guard against minor disharm onies than the stated
purpose of the performance might lead the audience to thir.k
was warranted. All of these general ch aracteristics of performances
can be seen a s interaction constraints which play
upon the individual and transform his activ itie s into performan
ces. Instead of merely doing his task and giving vent to
his feelings, he will express the doing of his task and acceptably
convey his feelings. In general, the representation
of an activity, especially when this representation is socialized
in accordance with interaction standards, will vary in some
degree from th e activity itself and therefore, in a certain
sense, will inevitably be a m isrepresentation of it. And
sin ce the individual will be required to rely on signs in order
to construct a representation of his activity, the image he
constructs, however faithful 10 the facts, will be subject to
all the disruptions that im pressions are subject to.
While we could retain the common-sense notion that fostered
appearances can be discredited by a discrepant reality, 'there
is often no reason for claiming that the facts discrepant with
the fostered impression are any more the teal reality than
is the fostered reality they have the power of embarrassing.
A cynical view of everyday performances can be as one-sided
as the one that is sponsored by the performer. For many
sociological iss u e s it may not even be necessary to decide
which is the more real, the fostered impression or the one
che performer attempts to prevent the audience from receiving.
The crucial sociological consideration, for this report, at
least, is merely that im pressions fostered in everyday performances
are subject to disruption. We will want to know
what kind of impression of reality can shatter the fostered
43
impression of reality, and what reality really is can be left
to other students. We will want to ask, "W hat are the ways
in which a given impression can be discredited?” and this
is not quite the same a s asking, "W hat are the ways in which
the given impression is false?”
We come back, then, to a realization that while the performance
offered by impostors and liars is in a sen se quite
flagrantly false and differs in th is respect from ordinary performances,
both are similar in the care their performers must
exert in order to maintain the impression that is fostered.
T hus, for example, we know that the formal code of British
civil s e rv a n ts 1 and of American baseball um pires2 obliges
them not only to d esist from making improper 'd e a l s ’ but
also to d esist from innocent action which might possibly
give the (wrong) impression that they are making deals.
Whether an honest performer wishes to convey the truth or
whether a dishonest performer wishes to convey a falsehood,
both must take care to enliven their performances with appropriate
expressions, exclude from their performances expressions
that might discredit the impression being fostered, and take
care le st the audience impute unintended meanings. B ecause
of these shared dramatic contingencies, we can profitably
study performances that are quite false in order to learn about
ones that are quite honest. 3
Mystification
I have suggested w ays in which the performance of an
individual accentuates certain matters and conceals others.
If we see perception a s a form of contact and communion,
»c control over what is perceived is control over contact
that is mr.J- . and the limitation and regulation of what is
shown is a i/miration and regulation of contact. There is a
relation here between informational terras and ritual ones.
Failure to regulate the information acquired by the audience
1 Dale, op. cit., p. 103-
2 PinelIi, op. cit., p. 100.
3 There is a further reason for giving attention to performances and fronts
that are flagrantly false. V.lten we find that fake television aerials are
sold to persons who do not have sets, and packngcs of exotic travel
lab els to persons who have never left home, and wire-whecl hub cap
attachm ents to motorists with ordinary cars, we have clear-cut evidence
of the impressive function of presumably instrumental objects. When we
study the real thing, i.e., persons with real aerials and rea)—sets,, e t c .,
it may be difficult in many c a s e s to demonstrate conclusively the impressive
function of what can be claimed a s a spontaneous or instrumental
act.
44
involves possible disruption of the projected definition of the
situation; failure to regulate contact involves possible ritual
contamination of the performer.
It is a widely held notion that restrictions placed upon
contact, the maintenance of social distance, provide a way
in which awe can be generated and sustained in the audience—
a way, as Kenneth Burke h as said, in which the audience can
be held in a state of mystification in regard to the performer.
Cooley’s statement may serve as an illustration:
How far ii is possible for a man to work upon others through a
false idea of himself depends upon a variety of circumstances. As
already pointed out, the man himself may be a mere incident with no
definite relation to the idea of him, the letter bein« a separate product
of the imagination. T h is can hatdly be except where there is no immediate
contact between leader and follower, and partly explains why
authority, especially if it covers intrinsic personal weakness, has
always a tendency to surround Itself wlrh forms and artificial mystery,
whose object is to prevent familiar contact and so give the imagination
a chance to idealize . . . . The discipline of armies and navies, for
instance, very distinctly recognizes the necessity of those forms which
separate superior from inferior, and so help to establish an unscrutini2ed
ascendancy in the former. In the same way manners, as Professor Ross
remarks in his work on Social Control, are largely used by men of the
world as a means of self-concealment, and this self-concealment serves,
among other purposes, that of preserving a sort of ascendancy over the
unsophisticated. 1
The logical conclusion to this kind of theory, whether it is
in fact correct or not, is to prohibit the audience from looking
at the performer at all, and at times when celescial qualities
and powers have been claimed by a performer, this logical
conclusion seems to have been put into effect.
Of course, in the matter of keeping social distance, the
audience itself will often co-operace by a c t ^ g in a respectful
fashion, in awed regard fc r the sacred integrity imputed to
the performer. As Simmel su g g ests:
To a c t upon the second of these decisions corresponds to the feeling
(which also operates elsewhere) that an ideal sphere lies around
every human being. Although differing in size in various directions
1Cooley, op cit , p. 551. Ponsonby, iri giving advice to the King of
.Norway, gives voice to the same theory, op. cit,, p. 277:
*One night K.ing Haakon told me of his difficulties in face ol the republican
leanings of the opposition and how careful in consequence he had to
be in all he did and said. He intended, he said, to go as much a s possible
among the people and thought it would be popular if, instead of going
in a motor car, he and Queen Maud wete to use the tramways.
* 1 told him frankly that I thought this would be a great mistake as
familiarity bred contempt. As a naval officer he would know that the
captain of a ship never had h is m eals with the other officers but remained
quite aloof. T h is was, of course, to scop any familiarity with them. 1
told him that he must get up on a pedestal and remain there. He could
then step off occasionally and no harm would be done. The people didn’t
want a King with whom they could hob-nob but something nebulous like
the Delphic oracle. The Monarchy was really the creation of each individu
a l’s brain. Every man liked to think what he would do, if he was King.
People invested the Monarch with every conceivable virtue and talent.
They were bound therefote to be disappointed if they saw him going
about like an ordinary man in the s tte e t.’
45
and differing according to the person with whom one entertains relations,
this sphere cannot be penetrated, unless the personality value of the
individual i s thereby destroyed. A sphere of this sort is placed around
man by his 'h o n o r.1 Language very poignantly d esig n ates an insult
to one s honor a s 'com ing too c l o s e : ’ the radius of this sphere marks,
a s it were, the d istan ce whose trespassing by another person insu lts
o n e 's honor. 1
Durkheim makes a sim ilar point:
The human personality i s a sacred t h i n g o n e does not violate it nor
infringe its bounds, while at the same time the greatest good i s in
communion with others. 2
It must be made quite clear, in contradiction to the implications
of Cooley’s remarks, that awe and distance are felt toward
performers of equal and inferior sta tu s a s w ell a s (albeit not
a s much) toward performers of superordinate status.
However mystical in character, th e se inhibitions of the
audience allow the performer some elbow-room in building
up an impressipn of h is own choice and allow him to function,
for his own good or the audience’s, a s a protection or a threat
that c lo se inspection would destroy.
[ would like, finally, to add that the m atters which the
audience leav e s alone because of their awe of the performer
are likely to be the m atters about which he would feel shame
were a disclosure to occur. As R iezler has suggested, we
have, then, a basic social coin, with awe on one side and
shame on the other. 3 T he audience se n ses secret m ysteries
and powers behind the performance, and the performer se n ses
that his chief se crets are petty ones. As countless folk tales
and initiation rites show, often the real secret behind the
mystery is that there really is no m ystery; the real problem
is to prevent the audience from learning th is too.
i T h e Sociology o f Georg Sim m el, trans. and ed. Kurt H.Wolff (Glencoe,
lit.: The Free P re ss , 1950), p. 321.
2 Emile Durkheim, Sociology and P hilosophy, trans. D. P. Pocock (London*
Cohen & West, 1953), P* 37.
3 Kurt Riezler» ‘ Comment on the Social Psychology of Shame.' Am erican
Journal o f Sociology, XL1II, 462 ff.
46
C H A P T E R II
TEAMS
In thinking about a performance it is easy to assume that
the content of the presentation is merely an expressive extension
of the character of the performer and to see the function
of the performance in th ese personal terms. T his is a limited
view and can obscure important differences in the function
of the performance for the interaction a s a whole.
F irst, it often happens that the performance serves mainly
to express the characteristics of the task that is performed
and not the characteristics of the performer. Thus one finds
that service personnel, whether in profession, bureaucracy,
business, or craft, enliven their manner with movements which
express proficiency and integrity, but, whatever this manner
conveys about them, often its major purpose is to establish
a favourable definition of their service or product. Further,
we often find that the personal front of the performer is employed
not so much because it allows him to present himself
a s he would like to appear but because his appearance and
manner can do something for a scen e of wider scope. It is
in this light that we can understand how the sifting and sorting
or urban life brings girls with good grooming and correct accent
into the job of receptionist, 'where they can present a front
for an organization as well as for them selves.
But most important of all, we commonly find that the definition
of the situation projected by a particular participant is
an integral part of a projection that is fostered and sustained
by the intimate co-operation of more than one participant,
and, moreover, that each member of such a troupe or cast
of players may be required to appear in a different light if
the team’s overall effect is to be satisfactory. Thus if a
household is to stage a formal dinner, someone in uniform or
livery will be required as part of the working team. The individual
who plays this part must direct at himself the social
definition of a menial. At the same time the individual taking
the part of h o ste ss must direct at herself, and foster by her
appearance and manner, the social definition of someone
upon whom it is natural for menials to wait. T his was
strikingly demonstrated in the island tourist hotel studied
by the writer. There an overall impression of m iddle-class
service was achieved by the management, who allocated to
them selves the roles of m iddle-class host and h o stess and
to their employees that of maids—although in terms of the
local c la s s structure the girls who acted as maids were of
slightly higher sta tu s than the hotel owners who employed
them. When hotel g uests were absent, no nonsense about a
m aid-m istress status difference was allowed by the maids.
Another example may be taken from m iddle-class family life.
In our society, when husband and wife appear before new
friends for an evening of sociability, the wife may demonstrate
more respectful subordination to the will and opinion of her
husband than she may bother to show when alone with him or
when with old friends. When sh e assum es a respectful role, he
can assum e a dominant one; and when each member of the
marriage team plays its special role, the conjugal unit, as a
unit, can sustain the impression that new audiences expect
of it. Race etiquette in the South provides another example.
C harles Johnson’s suggestion is that when few other whites
are in the region, a Negro may call his white fellow-worker
by his first name, but when other whites approach it is understood
that mistering will be reintroduced. 1 B usiness etiquette
provides a similar example:
When o utsiders ace present, the touch o( businesslike formality is
even more important. You may call your secretary 'M ary ' and yout
partner 'J o e * all day, but when a stranger comes inn) your office you
should tefet to your a s s o c ia te s a s you would expect the stranger to
ad dress them : Miss or Mr- You may have a running joke with the
switchboard operator, but you let :t ride when you are placing a call
in an outsider's hearing. 2
She (your secretary) w ants to be callcd Miss or Mrs in front of
stran g ers; at least, she won't be flattered if your *Mary* provokes
everyone else into addressing her with familiarity. *
In general, then, a se t of individuals who co-operate in staging
a single routine may be referred to as a performance team
or, in short, a team.
Until now in this report we have taken ihe individual’s
performance as the basic point of reference, and we have
concerned ourselves with two levels of fact—the individual
and his performance on one hand and the full set of participants
and the interaction as a whole on the other. For the study
of certain kinds and as p e c ts of interaction, this perspective
would seem sufficient; anything that did not fit this framework
could be handled as a resolvable complication of it. Thus
co-operation between two performers each of whom was o stensibly
involved in presenting his own special performance
could be analyzed as a type of collusion or 'u n d ersta n d in g ’
without altering the basic frame of reference. However in
the case-study of particular social establishm ents, ■the co­
1Charles S. Johnson, op. cit., pp. 137-138.
2 Esquire Etiquelte (Ph iladelp hia: Lippincott, 1953), p. 6.
*lbid., p- I?
48
operative activity of some of the participants seem s too
important to be handled merely as a variation on a previous
theme. Whether the members of a team stage sim ilar individual
performances or stage dissim ilar performances which fit together
into a whole, an emergent team impression arises which
can conveniently be treated a s a fact in its own right, as a
third level of fact located between the individual performance
on one hand and the total interaction of participants on the
other. It may even be said that if our special interest is the
study of impression management, of the contingencies which
arise in fostering an impression, and of the techniques for
meeting these contingencies, then the team and the reamperformance
may well be the best units to take as the
fundamental point of reference. 1 Given this point of reference,
it is p ossible to assim ilate such situations as two-person
interaction into the framework by describing these situations
as two-team interaction in which each team contains only one
member. (Logically speaking, one could even say that an
audience which was duly impressed by a particular social
setting in which no other persons were present would be an
audience w itnessing a team-performance in which the team
was one of no members.)
The concept of team allows us to think of performances
that are given by one, or more than one, performer: it also
covers another case. Earlier it was suggested that a performer
may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment
that the impression of reality which he fosters is the one
and only reality. In such c a s e s we have a sense in which
the performer comes to be his own audience; he comes to be
performer and observer of the same show. Presumably he
introcepts or incorporates the standards he attem pts to maintain
in the presence of others so that even in their absence his
conscience requires him to act in a socially proper way. In
these c a s e s it will have been necessary for the individual
in his performing capacity to conceal from himself in his
audience capacity the discreditable facts that he has had to
learn about the performance; in everyday terms, there will
be things he knows, or has known, that he will not be able
to tell himself. This intricate manoeuvre of self-delusion
constantly occurs; psychoanalysts have provi ie I us with
beautiful field data of this kind, - under the headings of
repression and dissociation. 2
1 The u se ol the team (as opposed to the performer) as the fundamental
unit 1 take ftom Von Neumann, op, cit., especially p. 53, where bridge
is an alysed a s a game between two players, each of whom in some
resp ects h as two separate individuals to do the playing.
2 Individualistic modes of thought tend to se e p ro cesses such a s self-
49
When a performer guides his private activity in accordance
with incorporated moral standards, he may asso cia te these
standards with a reference group of some kind so that, in a
sense, there will be a non-present audience for h is activity.
T his possibility leads us to consider a further one. The
individual may privately maintain standards of behaviour which
he does not personally believe in, maintaining these standards
because of a lively belief that an unseen audience is present
which will punish deviations from th ese standards. In other
words, an individual may be h is own audience or may imagine
an audience to be present.
A team has been defined a s a set of performers who cooperate
in presenting a single performance. Differences
have been suggested between the concept of team and the
concept of individual performer. It will be useful here to
distinguish the team, which is a type of collectivity, from
other collective groupings.
It i s apparent that individuals who are members of the
sam e team will find them selves, by virtue of this fact, in an
important relationship to one another. Two basic components
of this relationship may be cited.
F irst, ■it would seem that while a team-performance is
in progress, any member of the team has the power to give
the show away or to disrupt it by inappropriate conduct.
Each team-mate is forced to rely on the good conduct and
behaviour of his fellows, and they, in turn, are forced to rely
on him. There is, then, perforce, a bond of reciprocal dependence
[inking team-mates to one another. When members
of a team have different formal sta tu se s and rank in a social
establishm ent, as is often the case, then we can see that
the mutual dependence created by membership in the team
is likely to cut across structural or social cleavages in the
establishm ent and thus provide a source of cohesion for the
establishm ent. Where staff and line sta tu se s tend to divide
an organization, performance team s may tend to integrate
the divisions.
deception and insincerity as characterological w eaknesses generated
within the deep re c e s se s of the individual personality. It might be
b etter to start from outside the individual and work in than to start inside
the individual and work out. We may say that the sta rtin g point for
ail that is to come later co n sists of the individual performer maintaining
a definition of the situation before an audience. The individual autom
atically becomes insincere when he adheres to the obligation of
m aintaining a working consensus and when he participates in different
routines or performs a given part before different audiences. Self-deception
can be seen a s something that results when what were originally two
different roles, performer and audience, are compressed into the same
individual.
50
Secondly, it is apparenc that if members of a team muse
co-operate to maintain a given definition of the situation before
their audience, they will hardly be in a position to maintain
that particular impression before one another. Accomplices
in the maintenance of a particular appearance of things, they
are forced to define one another as persons ‘ in the know,’
a s persons before whom a particular front cannot be maintained.
Team-mates, then, in proportion to the frequency with which
they act as a team and the number of matters that fall within
impressional protectiveness, tend to be bound by rights of
what might be called ’ fam iliarity.’ Among team-mates, the
privilege of familiarity—which may constitute a kind of intimacy
without warmth—need not be something of an organic kind,
slowly developing with the passag e of time spent together,
but rather a formal relationship that is automatically extended
and received as soon a s the individual takes a place on the
team.
In suggesting that team-mates tend to be related to one
another by bonds of reciprocal dependence and reciprocal
familiarity, we must not confuse the type of group so formed
with other types, such as informal group or clique. A teammate
is someone whose dramaturgical co-operation one is
dependent upon in fostering a given definition of the situation;
if such a person comes to be beyond the pale of informal
sanctions and in sists on giving the show away or forcing it
to take a particular turn, he is none the le ss part of the team.
In fact, -it is just because he is part of the team that he can
cause this kind of trouble. Thus the isolate in the factory
who becomes a rate-buster is none the le s s part of the team,
even if his productive activity em barrasses the impression
the other workers are attempting to foster a s to what constitutes
a hard day’s work. As an object of friendship he
may be studiously ignored, but as a threat to the team’s definition
of the situation, he cannot be overlooked. Similarly, a
girl at a party who is flagrantly accessib le may be shunned
by the other girls who are present, but in certain matters she
is part of their team and cannot fail to threaten the definition
they are collectively maintaining that girls are difficult sexual
prizes. Thus while team-mates are often persons who agree
informally to guide their efforts in a certain way as a means
of self-protection and by doing so constitute an informal group,
this informal agreement is not a criterion for defining the
concept of team.
The members of an informal clique, using this term in
the sense of a small number of persons who join together for
51
informal am usem ents, may also constitute a ceam, for it is
likely that they will have to co-operate in tactfully concealing
rheir exclusiveness from some non-members while advertising
it snobbishly to others. There is, however, a meaningful contrast
between the concepts team and clique. In large social
establishm ents, individuals within a given statu s level are
thrown together by virtue of the fact that they must co-operate
in maintaining a definition of the situation toward those above
and below them. Thus a set of individuals who might be
dissim ilar in important resp e cts, and hence desirous of maintaining
social distance from one another, find they are in a
relation of enforced familiarity characteristic of team-mates
engaged in staging a show. Often it seem s that small cliques
form not to further the in terests of those with whom the individual
stag es a show but rather to protect him from an unwanted
identification with them. C liques, then, often function to
protect the individual not from persons of other ranks but from
persons of his own rank. Thus, while all the members of one's
clique may be of the same statu s level, it may be crucial that
not all persons of one’s status level be allowed into the
clique. 1
A final comment must be added on what a team is not.
Individuals may be bound together formally or informally into
an action group in order to further like or collective ends by
any means available to them. In so far as they co-operate
in maintaining a given impression, using this device as a
means of achieving their ends, they constitute what has here
been called a team. But it should be made quite clear that
there are many means by which an action group can achieve
ends other than by dramaturgical co-operation. Other means
to ends, such as force or bargaining power, may be increased
or decreased by strategic manipulation of im pressions, but
the exercise of force or bargaining power gives to a set of
individuals a source of group formation unconnected with
the fact that on certain occasio n s the group thus formed is
lik e l^ to act, dramaturgically speaking, as-a team. 2
If we are to employ the concept of team as a fundamental
point of reference, it will be convenient to retrace earlier
s te p s and redefine our framework of terms in order to adjust
1There are, of course, many b ases of clique formation. Edward Gross,
Informal Relations and the Social Organization o f Work in an Industrial
O ffice (unpublished P h .D . dissertation. Department of Sociology, University
of Chicago, 1949), sugg ests th at cliques may cross ordinary
age and' ethnic lines in order to brine together individuals whose work
activity is not seen a s a competitive reflection upon one another.
2 Similarly, an individual who i s in a position of power or leadership may
increase or decrease h is strength by the degree to which his appearance
and manner are appropriate and convincing, but it is not claimed that
the dramaturgical qualities of h is action necessarily or even commonly
constitute the fundamental basis of h is position.
52
for die use of team, rattier than individual performer, t>' the
Kasic unit.
It has been suggested that the object of a perlormer is
to sustain a particular definition of the situation, this
representing, as it were, his claim as to what reality is.
As a one-man team, with no team-mates to inform of his
decision, he can quickly decide which-of the available stands
on a matter to take and then wholeheartedly act as if his
choice were the only one he could possibly have taken. And
his choice of position may be nicely adjusted to his own
particular situation.
When we turn front a one-man team to a larger one, the
character of the reality that is espoused by the team changes.
Instead of a rich definition of the situation, reality may become
reduced to a thin party line, for we may expect the line to
be unequally congenial to the members of the team. We may
expect ironic remarks by which a team-mate jokingly rejects
the line while seriously accepting it. On th e . other hand,
there will be the new factor of loyalty to one’s team and
one’s team-mates to provide support for the team’s line.
It seems to be generally felt that public disagreement
among the members of the team not only incapacitates them
lor united action but also em barrasses the reality sponsored
by the team. To protect this impression of reality, members
of the team may be required to postpone taking public stands
until the position of the team has been settled; and once
the team’s stand has been taken, all members may be obliged
to follow it. 1 An illustration may be taken from the civil
se rv ic e :
Ac such committees (Cabinet Committee meetings) civil servants
share iu the discussions and evprcss their views freely, subject to
one qualification : they will not directly oppose theit own Minister.
The possibility of such open disagreement very rarely arises, and
ou^ht never co 3 r i s e : in nine c a s e s out of Len, the Minister and the
c ivil servant who attends the cjnm itcce with him have agreed beforehand
what line is ro be taken, and in che tenth the civil servant who
disagrees with his M in isters view on a particular point will stay
3wav from the meeting where it is co be discussed. 2
Another illustration may he cited from a recent study
power structure of a smnlL city:
If one has been en^a^cd in community work on any scale at all,
Si: is impressed over and over with whac might be termed the ’ principle
ol unanimity.’ \Mien policy is finally formulated by the leaders in
the community, chere is an immediace demand on their part for strict
conformity of opinion. Oecisions are not usually arrived at hutriedly.
There is ample time, parcicularly among (he top leaders, lor discussion
of most projects before a state of action is set. This is true for
community projects. When the time for discussion is past and che
line is set, rhen unanimity is called for. P ressures are put upon
1 I’he question of the amount of ’Soviet self-criticism* that is allowed,
and from whom it is allowed, before che team 's position is announced
is not here at issue.
2 Pale, op. cit , p. 141.
53
dissen ters, and the project is under way. 1
However, unanimity is often not the sole requirement of
the team’s projection. There seems to be a general feeling
that the most real and solid things in life are ones whose
description individuals independently agree upon. We tend
to feel that if two participants in an event lec'ide to be as
honest a s they can in recounting it, then the stands they
take will be acceptably similar even though they do not
consult ode another prior to their presentation. Intention
to tell the truth presumably makes such prior consultation
unnecessary. And we also tend to feel that if the two
individuals wish to tell a lie or to slant the version of the
event which they offer, then not only will it be necessary
for them to consult with one another in order, as we say,
' to get their story straight,’ but it will also be necessary
to conceal the fact that an opportunity for such prior
consultation was available to them. In other words, in staging
a definition of the situation, it may be necessary for the
several members of the team to be unanimous in the positions
they take and secretive about the fact that these positions
were noc independently arrived at. (Incidentally, if the
members of the team are a ls o engaged in maintaining a show
of self-respect before one another, it may be necessary for
the members of the team to learn what the line is to be, and
take it, without admitting to them selves and to one another
the extent to which cheir position is not independently arrived
at, but such problems carry us somewhat beyond the teamperformance
a s the basic point of reference.)
It should be noted that just as a team-mate ought to wait
1 Floyd iiunter, Community Power Structure (Chapel Hill: University of
Notch Carolina P re ss, 1953)» p. 181. See also p. 118 and p. 212. Open
disagreement in front of the audience creates, as we say, a false note.
It may be suggested that literal false notes arc avoided tor quite the
sam e reasons that figurative false notes are avoided; in both c a s e s it
i s a matter of su staining a definition of the situation. This may be
illustrated from a brief book on the work problems of the professional
concert-nrtist accompanist, Gerald Moore, fh e Unashamed Accompanist
(New York: Macmillan, 1944), p* 60:
* The nearest that she singer and pianist can get to an ideal performance
is to do cxactly what the composer wants, yet sometimes rhe singer
will require his partner to do something which is in flat contradiction
to the composer's markings, lie will want an accent where there should
be none, he will make a firmala where it is not needed, he w»ll make
a rallentando when it should be a tempo', he will be forte when,he
should be p ia n o: he may sentim entalize when the mood should be
nobilmente.
‘ The list is by no means exhausted. The singer will swear with
h is hand on his heart and tears in his eyes that he does and always
aim s to do exactly what the composer has written. It is very awkward.
If he sings it one way and the pianist plays it another way the result
is chaotic. Discussion may be of no avail. Dut what is an accompanist
to do ?
' At the performance he must be with the singer, but afterwards let
him erase the memory of it from his mind . . .'
54
for the official woH before taking his stan.l, so the official
word ought to be made available to him so that he can play
his part on the team and feel a part of it. To withhold from
a teaii-mate information about the stand his team is taking
i s to withhold his character from him, for without knowing
what stand he will be taking he may not be able to assert a
self to the audience. Thus, if a surgeon is to operate on a
patient referred to him by another doctor, common courtesy
may oblige the surgeon to tell the referring doctor when the
operation will be and, if the referring doctor does not appear
at the operation, to telephone him the result of the operation.
By thus being 'filled in,’ the referring doctor can, more effectively
than otherwise, present himself to the patient’s kinsfolk
as someone who is participating in the medical action. 1
I would like to add a further general fact about maintaining
the line during a performance. When a member of the team
makes a mistake in the presence of the audience, we often
find that the other team members must suppress their immediate
desire to punish and instruct the offender until, that is, the
audience is no longer present. After all, immediate corrective
sanctioning would often only disturb the interaction further
and, a s previously suggested, make the audience privy to n
view that ought to be reserved for team-mates. Thus, tn
authoritarian organizations, where a team of superordinates
maintains a show of being right every time and of possessing
a united front, there is often a strict rule that one superordinate
must not show hostility or disrespect toward any
other superordinate while in the presence of a member of the
subordinate team. Army officers show consensus when before
enlisted men, parents when before children, 2 managers when
before workers, nurses when before patients, 3 and the like.
Of course, when the subordinates are absent, open, violent
1 fn commenting on how some Chinese merchants set the price of iheit
goods according to the appearance of the customer, Chester Holcombe,
The R eal Chinaman (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1895), p. 293, goes on to
say :
'O n e peculiar result of this study of a customer is seen in the fact
that if a person enters a store in China, and, after examining several
articles, asks the price of any one of them, unless it is positively
known that he has spoken to but one clerk, no answer will be made by
him to whom the question is put until every other clerk has been asked
if he lias named a price for the article in question io the gentleman.
If, a s very rarely happens, this important precaution Is neglected, the
sum named by different clerks will almost invariably be unlike, thus
showing that they fail to agree in their estim ates of the customer.*
2 An interesting dramaturgical difficulty in the family is that sex and
lineal solidarity, 'which cross-cut conjugal solidarity, make it difficult
for husband and wife to 'b a c k each other up ’ in a show of authority
before children or a show of either distance or familiarity with extended
kin. As previously suggested, such cross-cutting lines of affiliation
prevent the widening of structural cleavages.
3 Taxel, op. eil., pp. 53-54.
55
criticism may and does occur. For example, in a recent study
of the teaching profession, it was found that teachers felt that
if they are to sustain an impression of professional competence
and institutional authority, they must make sure that when
angry parents come to the school with complaints, the principal
will support the position of his staff, at least until the parents
h a /e left. 1 Similarly, teachers feel strongly chat their fellowteachers
ought not to disagree with or contradict them in front
of students. 'J u s t let another teacher raise her eyebrow funny,
just so they (the children) know, and they don’t miss a tiling,
and their respect for you goes right away.’ 2 Similarly, we
learn that the medical profession has a strict code of etiquette
whereby a consultant in the presence of the patient and his
doctor is careful never to say anything which would embarrass
the impression of competence that the patient’s doctor is
attempting to maintain. As Hughes suggests, 'T h e
(professional) etiquette is a body of ritual which grows up
informally to preserve, before the clients, the common front
of the profession.’ 3 And, of course, this kind of solidarity
in the presence of subordinates also occurs when performers
are in the presence of superordinates. For example, in a
recent study of the police we leam that a patrolling team of
two policemen, who witness each other’s illegal and semiillegal
ac ts and who are in an excellent position to discredit
each other’s show of legality before the judge, po ssess heroic
solidarity and will stick by each other’s story no matter what
atrocity it covers up or how little chance there is of anyone
believing it. 4
It is apparent that if performers are concerned with maintaining
a line they will select as team-mates those who
can be trusted to perform properly. Thus children of the
house are often excluded from performances given for guests
of a domestic establishm ent because often cnil iren cannot
be trusted to 'behave* them selves, i.e., to refrain from acting
in a way inconsistent with the impr'ession that is being
fostered. 6 In fact, children must often be excluded from
1Howard S. Becker, *The T eacher in the Authority System of the Public
School,' Journal o f Educational Sociology, XXVII, 134.
*!bi<(., from an interview, p. 139.
3 E. C .Hughes, 'Institutions,* New Outline o f the Principles o f Sociology,
ed. Alfred M .L ee (New York : Barnes and Noble 1946), p. 273**William
Westley, 'T h e P o lic e ' (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Department
of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1952), pp. 187-196.
5 In so far a s children are defined a s 'non-persons* they have some
liccnce to commit gauche acts without requiring the audience to take
the expressive im plications of these acts too seriously. However,
56
gossip and from adm issions on the par: of older members of
the family, since one can never he sure to whom one’s children
will convey one’s secrets, so that it will be only when the
child arrives at the age of discretion that the voices of his
parents will cease to drop as he enters the room. Similarly,
those who are known to become intoxicated when drink is
available and who become verbose or ' difficult ’ when chis
occurs constitute a performance risk, as do those who are
sober but foolishly indiscreet, and those who refuse to 'en te r
into the sp irit’ of the occasion and help sustain the impression
that the guests tacitly unite in maintaining to the host.
1 have suggested that in many interaction settings some
of the participants co-operate together as a team or are in a
position where they are dependent upon this co-operation in
order to maintain a particular definition of the situation. Now
when we study concrete social establishm ents we often find
that there will be a significant sense in which all the remaining
participants, in their several performances of response
to the team-show put on before them, will themselves constitute
a team. Since each team will be playing through its
routine for the other, we may speak of dramatic interaction,
not dramatic action, and we can see this interaction not as
a medley of as many voices as there are participants but
rather as a kind of dialogue and interplay between two teams.
I do not know of any general reason why interaction in natural
settings usually takes the form of two-team interplay, or is
resolvable into this form, instead of involving a larger number,
but empirically this seems to be the case. Thus, in large
social establishm ents, where several different status grades
prevail, we find that for the duration of any particular interaction,
participants of many different statu ses are typically
expected to align themselves temporarily into two team groupings.
For example, a lieutenant on an Army post will in on1,
situation find himself aligned with all the officers and opposed
to all enlisted men; at other times he will find himself aligned
with junior officers, presenting with them a show for the
benefit of senior officers present. There are, of course,
asp ects of certain interactions for which a two-team model
is apparently not suitable. Important elements, for example,
of arbitration hearings seem to fit a three-team model, and
asp ects of some competitive and 's o c i a l ’ situations suggest
a multi-team model. It should also be made clear that whatever
the number of teams, there will be a se n se in which the
whether treated as non-persons or not, children are in a position to
disclose crucial secrets.
57
interaction can be analysed in terms of the co-operative effort
of all participants to maintain a working consensus.
If we treat an interaction as a dialogue between two
teams, ic will sometimes be convenient to call one team the
performers and to call the other team the audience or the
observers, neglecting momentarily that the audience, too,
will be presenting a team-performance. In some ca se s, as
when two one-person teams interact in a public institution
or in the home of a mutual friend, it may be an arbitrary
choice a s to which team to call the performer and which to
call the audience. In many important social situations,
however, the social setting in which the interaction occurs
is assem bled and managed by one of the team s only, and
contributes in a more intimate way to the show this team
puts on than to thfe show put on in response by the other
team. A customer in a shop, a clienc in an office, a group
of guests in the home of their h o sts—these persons put on a
performance and maintain a front, but the setting in which
they do this is outside of cheir immediate control, being an
integral part of the presentation made by those into whose
presence they have come. In such ca se s, it will often be
convenient co call the team which controls the setting the
performing team, and to call the other team the audience.
So, too, it will sometimes be.convenient to label as performer
the team which contributes the most activity co the interaction,
or plays the more dramatically prominent part in it, or sets
che pace and direction which both teams will follow in their
interactive dialogue.
The obvious point muse be stated chat if the team is co
sustain che impression chat ic is fostering, then chere must
be some assurance that no individual will be allowed to
join boch team and audience. Thus, for example, if the proprietor
of a small American la d ies’-ready-to-wear is to put a
dress on sa le and tell his customers that it is marked down
because of soilage, or end of the season, or last of a line,
etc., and conceal from her that ic is really marked down
because it won’t sell, or is a bad colour,- or style, and if he
is ro impress her by calking about a buying office in New
York which he does not have or an adjustment manager who
is really a salesgirl, then he must make sure chac if he finds
it necessary co hire an extra girl for part-time work on Saturday
he does not hire one trom che neighbourhood who has been a
customer and who will soon be one again. 1
It is often felt that control of the setting is an advantage
1 T hese Illustrations are taken from George Rosenbaum, 'An Analysis of
Personalization in Neighbourhood Apparel R etailing’ (Unpublished M. A.
th esis, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953), pp. 86-87-
58
during interaction. la a narrow sense, this control allows a
team to introduce strategic devices for determining the information
the audience is able to acquire. Thus, if Joctors are
to prevenc cancer patients from learning the identity of their
disease, it will be useful to scatter the cancer patients
throughout the hospital so that they will not be able to learn
from the identity of their ward the identity of their disorder.
(The hospital staff, incidentally, may be forced to spend
more time walking corridors and moving equipment because
of this staging strategy than would otherwise be necessary.)
Similarly, the master barber who regulates the flow of appointments
by means of a scheduling took open to his public is
in a position to protect his coffee-break by filling a properlytimed
appointment with a dummy code name. A prospective
customer can then see for himself that it will not be possible
for him to have an appointment at that time. 1 So, too, if any
member of a hotel staff is suspicious of the intentions or
character of a guest couple, a secret signal can be given to
the bellboy to 'throw the latch .1
T h is is simply a device which makes it easier for employees to
keep an eye on suspected parties.
After rooming the couple, the bellman, in closing the door behind
him, pushes a tiny button on the insiJc of the knob handle. This
turns a little tumbler inside the lock and makes a black stripe show
against the circular center of the latch on the outside. U*s inconspicuous
enough so as not to be noticed by the guest, but maids, patrols,
w aiters and bellmen are all trained to watch for them . . . and to
report any loud conversations or unusual occurrences vyhich take
place behind them. 2
More broadly, control of the setting may give the controlling
team a sense of security. As one studenc suggestsconcerning
the pharmacist-doctor relation:
T he score is another factot. The doctor often comcs to the
pharm acist's store for medicine, for b its of information, fot conversation.
In these conversations the man behind the counter has approximately
the same advantage that a standing speaker has ovet a sitting
audience ^
i An interesting use of setting and props is reported in a newspaper article
on sorotities, Joan Beck, *t h a t ’s \fcrong with Sorority Rushing?’ Chicago
Tribune Magazine, January 10, 1954, pp. 20-21, where a description is
given of how the sorority sisters, who give a tea for prospective members,
are able to sort out good prospects ftom bad without giving the impression
that guests of the house are being treated differentially:
*u Even with recommends, it's hard to remember 967 girls by just
meeting them for a few minutes in a receiving line,” admitted Carol.
MSo we've worked out this gimmick to separate the good ones from the
dull characters. Ae have three trays for the rushees' calling ca rd sone
fot golden girls, one for look~agains, one for pots.
'" T h e active who is talking with the rushee at the party is supposed
to escort her subtly to the appropriate tray when s h e 's ready to lrav^
her card,” Carol continued. "T h e rushees never figure out what w e’re
doing !-1
2 Dev Collans, with Stewart Sterling, / A House D etective (New York:
Dutton, 1954), p. 56. E llipsis dots the author's.
^ e i n l e i n , op. cit., p. 105.
59
One thinj; chat contributes co this feeling of che independence of
the pharm acist's medical practice is his store. The store is, in a
sen se, a part of the pharmacist- Ju st as Neptune is pictured as
rising from the sea, while a t the same time being che s e a ; so in the
pharmaceutical ethos there is a vision of a dignified pharmacist
tirwering above shelves and counters of bottles auu equipment, while
at the same time being part of thoir essen ce . 1
A price must, of course, be paid for che privilege of giving
a performance on one’s home ground; one has che opportunicy
of conveying information abouc oneself through sc en ic means
but no opportunity of concealing the kinds of faccs chac are
conveyed by scenery.
When we examine a ceam-performance, we often find that
som eone is given che right to direct and control the progress
of the dramatic action. The equerry in court establishm ents
is an example. Sometimes the individual who dominates the
show in this way and is, in a sense, the director of it, plays
an actual part in the performance he directs. In general, the
members of the team will differ in the ways and the degree
to which they are allowed co direcc che performance. Ic may
be noted, incidentally, that, dramaturgically sp e a k in g ,. the
structural sim ilarities of apparently diverse routines are
nicely reflected in the like-mindedness that arises in directors
everywhere. Whether ic is a funeral, a wedding, a bridge
party, a one-day sale, a hanging, or a picnic, •che director
may tend to see the performance in terms of whether or not
it went 'sm oothly,’ 'effe ctiv ely ,1 and 'w ithout a hitch,’ and
1Weinlein, op. cit., pp. 105-106. A nice literary illustration of the eifccts
of being robbed of control over o n e s own setring i« given in l*ranz
Kafka, The Trial (Ne-* York: KjTopf, 1948), pp. 14-15, where K .s meeting
with the authorities' in his own boarding house is described:
’ VShen he was fully dressed he had to walk, with Uillem trending
nn his heels, through the next room, which was now empty, into the
adjoining one, whose double doors were flung open. This room, ns K.
knew quite well, had tecencly l>ecn taken by a Fraulcin Uursrner, a
typist, who went very early to work, came home lace, and with whom he
hud exchanged little more dian few words in passing. Mow the nighttable
beside her bed had been pushed into die middle of the floor to
serve a« desk, and the Inspector was sitting behind it. lie had crosscd
h is legs, and one arm was resting on the back of the chair.
. . . . ’ "J o se p h K. ? ” asked the inspector, perhaps merely to draw
K-’s distracted glance upon himself. K. nodded. "You are presumably
very surprised a t the events of this m orning?" asked che inspector,
with both hands rearranging the few things that lay on the oigltt-table,
a candle and a matchbox, a book and a pincushion, as if they were objects
which he required for h is interrogation. “ Certainly,n said K., and he
was filled with pleasure at having encountered a sensible man at lasr,
with whom he could d iscuss the matter. * Certainly, I am surprised,
but I am by rro means very surprised.” "Not very s u r p r is e d ? ” asked
the inspector, setting the candle in the middle of the table and dicn
grouping the other things around it. “ Perhaps you misunderstand me,*
K. hastened ro add. *[ m e a n " —here K. stopped and looked round him
for a c h a ir—" I suppose 1 may sit down ? " he ask"d. " lt‘s not usual,”
answered the Inspector.'
60
whether or not all possible disruptive contingencies were
prepared for in advance.
tn many performances two important functions must be
fulfilled, and if the team has a director he will often be given
the special duty of fulfilling these functions.
First, the director may be given the special duty of bringing
baclc into line any member of the team whose performance
becomes unsuitable. Soothing and sanctioning are the
corrective processes ordinarily involved. The role of the
baseball umpire in sustaining a particular kind of reality
for the fans may be taken as an illustration.
All umpires in sist that players keep themselves under control, and
refrain from gescures that reflect concempt for their decisions. 1
I certainly had blown off my share of steam as a player, and I
knew there had to be a safety valve for release of the terrific tension.
As nn umpire 1 could sympathize with the players. Gut as an umpire
I had to decide how for I could let a player go without delaying the
r.Amc and without permitting him to insult, assault, or ridicule me
and belittle the game. Handling trouble and mea on the field was
j s important as calling them tight—and more difficult.
It is easy for any umpire to thumb a man out of the game. It is
often a much more difficult job to keep him in the game—to understand
and anticipate his complaint so that a nasty rhubarb cannot develop. 2
I do not tolerate clowning on the field, and neither will any other
umpire. Comedians belong on the stage, or on television not in
baseball. A travesty or burlesque of the game can only cheapen it,
and also hold the umpire up to scorn- for allowing such a sketch to
tak e place. T h at’s why you will see the funnymen and wise guys
chased a s soon a s they begin their routine. 3
Often, of course, the director will not so much have to smother
improper affect as he will have to stimulate a show of proper
affective involvement; 'sparking the show ’ is the phrase
sometimes employed for this cask in Rotarian circles.
Secondly, the director may be given the special duty of
allocating the parts in the performance and the personal front
that is employed in each part, for each establishment may
be seen as a place with a number of characters to dispose
of to prospective performers and as an assem blage of sign
equipment or ceremonial paraphernalia to be allocated.
It is apparent that if the director corrects for improper
appearances and allocates major and minor prerogatives,
chen other members of the ream (who are likely to be concerned
with the show they can put on for one another as well as
with the show they can collectively stage for the audience)
will have an attitude toward the director that they do not
have toward their other team-mates. Further, if the audience
1Pinelli, op. cit., p. H I .
2 Ibid., p. 131.
3 I b id , p. 139.
61
appreciates that the performance has a Jirector, they are
likely to hold him more responsible chan other performers
for the s u c c e ss of the performance. The director is likely
to respond to this responsibility by making dramaturgical
demands on the performance that chey might not make upon
them selves. This may add to the estrangement they may
already feel from him. A director, hence, starting as a member
of the team, may find himself slowly edged into a marginal
role between audience and performers, half in and half out of
both camps, a kind of go-between without the protection that
go-betweens usually have. The factory foreman has been
a recently discussed example. 1
When we study a routine which requites a team of several
performers for its presentation, we sometimes find that one
member of the team is made the star, lead, or centre of
attention. We may see an extreme example of this in traditional
court life, where a room full of court attendants will
be arranged in the manner of a living tableau, s d that the
eye, starting from any point in the room will be led to the
royal centre of attention. The royal star of the performance
may also be dressed more spectacularly and seated higher
than anyone e lse present. An even more spectacular centring
of attention may be found in the dance arrangements of large
musical comedies, in which forty or fifty dancers are made
to prostrate them selves around the herpine. In general, we
find that those who help present a team-performance differ
in the degree of dramatic dominance given each of them and
that one team-routine differs from another in the extent to
which differentials in dominance are given its members.
T he conception of dramatic and directive dominance,
as contrasting types of power in a performance, can be
applied, mutatis mutandis, to an interaction a s a whole,
where it will be possible to point out which of the two teams
lias more of which of the two types of power anJ which performers,
taking the participants of both teams all together,
lead in these two regards.
Frequently, of course, we may expect that the performer
or team which has one kind of dominance is likely also to
to have the other, but this is by no means always the case.
F or example, during the showing oi the body at a funeral
home, usually the social setting and all participants, in­
1 See, for example, Donald E. Wray, 'Marginal Men of Industry: The
Foreman,' American Journal of Sociology, LIV, pp. 298-301, and Fritz
Koethlisberger, 'T h e torem an : Master and Victim of Double Talk,'
Harvard B u siness Review, XXIII, pp. 285-294. The role of go-between
i s considered later.
62
eluding both the bereaved team and the establishment’s
team, will be arranged so as to express their feelings for
and ties with the deceased; he will be the centre of the show
and the dramatically dominant participant in it. However,
since the bereaved are inexperienced and grief-laden, and
since the star of the show must stay in character a s someone
who is in a deep sleep, the undertaker himself will direct
the show, although he may all the while be self-effacing in
th e presence of the corpse or be in another room of the establishment
getting ready for another showing.
It should be made clear that dramatic and directive dominance
are dramaturgical terms and that performers who enjoy
such dominance may not have other types of power and
authority. It is common knowledge that performers who have
positions of visible leadership are often merely figureheads,
selected as a compromise, or as a way of neutralizing a
potentially threatening position, or as a way of strategically
concealing the power behind the front and hence the power
behind the power behind the front. So also, whenever inexperienced
or temporary incumbents are given formal authority
over experienced subordinates, we often find that the formally
empowered person is bribed with a part that has dramatic
dominance while the subordinates tend to direct the show. 1
T hus it has often been said about the British Infantry in
World War I that experienced working-class sergeants managed
the delicate task of covertly teaching their new lieutenants
to take a dramatically expressive role at the head of the
platoon and to die quickly in a prominent dramatic position,
as befits Public School men. The sergeants themselves took
their modest place at the rear of the platoon and tended to
live to train still other lieutenants.
Dramatic and directive dominance have been mentioned
as two dimensions along which each place on a team can
vary. By changing the point of reference a little, we can
discern a third mode of variation.
In general, those who participate in the activity that occurs
in a social establishm ent become members of a team when
they co-operate together to present their activity in a particular
light. However, in taking on the role of a performer, the
individual need not cease to devote some of his effort to
non-dramaturgical concerns, that is, to the activity itself
of which the performance offers an acceptable dramatization.
' See David Riesman, in collaboration with Reuel Denny and Nathan
Glaser, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven: Ynle University P ress, 1950),
*The Avocacional Counselors,' pp. 363-367-
63
We may expect, then, that the individuals who perform on a
particular team will differ among them selves in the way they
apportion their time between mere activity an I mere performance.
At one extreme we find individuals who rarely
appear before the audience and are little concerned with
appearances. At the other extreme we find what are sometimes
ca 'le d 'purely ceremonial ro les,’• whose performers will be
concerned with the appearance that they make, and concerned
with little else. For example, the president and the research
director of a national union may both spend time in the main
office of the union headquarters, •appearing suitably dressed
and suitably spoken in order to give the union a front of
respectability. However we may find that the president also
engages in making many important decisions whereas the
research director may have little to do except be present in
body as part of the president’s retinue. Union officials
conceive of such purely ceremonial roles as part of 'windowdressing.'
1 It may be remarked that an individual with a
purely ceremonial role need not have a dramatically dominant
one.
ammaro
A team, then, may be defined as a set of individuals
whose intimate co-operation is required if n given projected
definition of the situation is to be maintained. A team is a
grouping, but it is a grouping not in relation to a social
structure or social organization but rather in relation to an
interaction or series of interactions in which the relevant
definition of the situation is maintained.
We have seen, and will see further, that if n performance
is to be effective it will be likely that the extent and character
of the co-operation that makes this possible will be concealed
and kept secret. A team, then, has something ol the character
of a secret society. • Thfe audience may appreciate, of course,
that all the members of the team are held together by a bond
no member of the audience shares. Thus, for example, when
customers enter a service establishment, they clearly
appreciate that all employees are different from customers
by virtue of this official role. However, the individuals who
'S e e Harold L. Wilensky, 'T h e Staff "E x p e rt:" A Study of the Intelligence
Function in American Trade U nions' (Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.
Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953), chap. iv. in
addition to his th esis material, 1 am indebted Mr Wilensky for many
suggestions.
64
are on the staff of an establishment are not members of a
team by virtue of staff status, but only by virtue of the cooperation
which they maintain in order to sustain a given
definition of the situation. No effort may be made in many
c a se s to conceal who is on the staff; but they form a secret
socicty, a team, in so far as a secret is kept as to how they
are co-operating together to maintain a particular definition
of the situation. Teams may be created by individuals to
aid the group they are members of, but in aiding themselves
and their group in this dramaturgical way, they are acting
as a team, not a group. T hus a team, as used herein, is the
kind of secret society whose members may be known by noninembers
to constitute a society, even an exclusive one, but
the society these individuals are known to constitute is not
the one they constitute by virtue of acting as a team.
65
C H A P T E R HI
REGIONS AND REGION BEHAVIOUR
A region may be defined as any place that is bounded
to some degree by barriers to perception. Regions vary,
of course, in the degree to which they are bounded and
according to the media of communication in which the barriers
to perception occur. Thus thick glass panels, such as are
found in broadcasting control rooms, can isolate a region
aurally but not visually, while an office bounded by beaverboard
partitions is closed off in the opposite way.
In our Anglo-American society—a relatively indoor one—
when a performance is given it is usually. given in a highly
bounded region, to which boundaries with respect to time
are often added. The impression and understanding fostered
by the performance will then tend, as it were, to saturate
the region and time span, so that any individual located in
this space-tim e manifold will be in a position to observe the
performance and be guided by the definition of the situation
which the performance fosters. 1
Often a performance will involve only one focus of visual
attention on the part of performer and audience, a s , for
example, when a political speech is presented in a hall or
when a patient is talking to a doctor in the latter’s consultingroom.
However many performances involve, as constituent
parts, seperate knots or clusters of verbal interaction. T hus
a cocktail party typically involves several conversational
sub-groups which constantly shift in size and membership.
So, too, the show maintained on the floor of a shop typically
involves several foci of verbal interaction, each composed
of attendant-customer pairs.
Given a particular performance as a point of reference,
it will sometimes be convenient to use the term 'front region’
to refer to the pl?ce where the performance is given. The
fixed sign-equipment in such a place has already been referred
to as that part of front called 's e ttin g .' We will have to
see that some asp ects of a performance seem to be played
not to the audience but to the front region.
1Under the term 'behavioural se tting,’ Wright and Barker, in a research
methodology report, give a very clear statement of the se n se s in which
expectations regarding conduct come to be associated with particular
p laces. See Herbett F . Wright and Roger G. Barker, Methods in Psychological
Ecology (Topeka: K an sas: Ray’s Printing Service, 1950).
66
The performance of an individual in a front region may be
seen as an effort to give the appearance that his activity
in the region maintains and embodies certain standards.
These standards seem to fall into two broad groupings. One
grouping has to do with the way in which the performer treats
the audience while engaged in tall: with them or in gestural
interchanges that are a substitute for talk. These standards
are sometimes referred to as matters of politeness. The other
group of standards has to do with the way in which the performer
comports himself while in visual or aural range of the
audience but not necessarily engaged in talk with them.
I shall use the term decorum to refer to this second group
of standards, although some excuses and some qualifications
will have to be added to justify the usage.
Uhen we look at the requirements of decorum in a region,
requirements of the kind not related to the handling of others
in conversation, we tend to divide these again into two subgroupings,
moral and instrumental. Moral requirements are
ends in them selves and presumably refer to rules regarding
non-interference and non-molestation of others, rules regarding
sexual propriety, rules regarding respect for sacred
places, etc. Instrumental requirements are not ends in themselv
es and presumably refer to duties such as an employer
might demand of his employe.es—care of property, maintenance
of work levels, etc. It may be felt chat the term decorum
ought to cover only the moral standards and that another
term should be used to cover the instrumental ones. When
we examine the order that is maintained in a given region,
however, we find that these two kinds of demands, moral
and instrumental, seem to affect in much the same way the
individual who must answer to them, and that both moral and
instrumental grounds or rationalization are put forth as
justifications for most standards that must be maintained.
Providing the standard is maintained by sanctions and by
a sanctioner of some kind, it will often be of small moment
to the performer whether the standard is justified chiefly
on instrumental grounds or moral ones, and whether he is
asked to incorporate the standard.
It may be noted that the part of personal front we have
called 'm an n e r’ will be important in regard to politeness
and that the part we have called ’ appearance’ will be important
in regard to decorum. It may also be noted that
while decorous behaviour may take the form of showing respect
for the region and setting one finds oneself in, this show of
respect may, of course, be motivated by a desire to impress
67
the audience favourably, or avoid sanctions, etc. Finally,
it should be noted that the requirements of decorum are more
pervasive ecologically than are the requirements of politeness.
An audience can subject an entire front region to a continuous
inspection as regards decorum, but while the audience is
so engaged, none or only a few of the performers may be
obliged to talk to the audience and hence to demonstrate
politeness.
In the study of social establishm ents it is important to
describe the standards of decorum; it is difficult to do so
because informants and students tend to take many of these
standards for granted not realizing they have done so until
an accident, or crisis, or peculiar circumstance occurs. VC’e
know, for example, that different business offices have
different standards as regards informal chatter among clerks,
f'Ut it is only when we happen to study an office that has
a sizeable number of foreign refugee employees that we
suddenly appreciate that permission to engage in informal
talk may not constitute permission to engage in informal
talk in a foreign language. 1
We are accustomed to assuming that the rules of decorum
that prevail in sacred establishm ents, such as churches, will
be much different from the ones that prevail in everyday places
of work. We ought not to assume from this that die standards
in sacred places are more numerous and more s m c t than those
we find in work establishm ents. While in church, a woman
may be permitted to sit, daydream, and even doze; a s a
saleswoman on the floor of a dress shop, she may be required
to stand, keep alert, refrain from chewing gum, keep a fixed
smile on her face even when not talking to anybody and
wear clothes she can ill afford.
One form of decorum that has been studied in social
establishm ents is what is called ’ make-work.’ It is understood
in many establishm ents that not only will workers be
required to produce a certain amount after a certain length
of time but also that they will be ready, when called upon,
to give the impression that they are working hard at the
moment. Of a shipyard we learn the following:
It was amusing to watch the sudden transformation whenever
word KOt round that the foreman was on the hull or in the shop or
that a ftont-office superintendent was coming by. ‘Juarcermen and
lcadermen would rush to their groups of workers and stir them to
obviuus activity. ’ l)on\ let him catch you sitting down,’ was the
universal admonition, and where no work existed a pipe was busily
bent and threaded, or a bolt which was already firmly in place was sub-
1See Gross, op. cit., p. 186.
68
j e n e J to further and unnecessary tightening. T his * a s the formal
tribute invariably attending a visitation by rhe boss, und its conventions
were as familiar to both sid es as ihose surrounding a five-star general's
inspection. To have neglected any detail of rhe false and empty sh'*>*would
have been interpreted a s a mark- of singular disrespect. 1
Similarly, of o hospital ward we learn:
The observer was told very explicitly by other attendants on his first
day of work on the wards not to ‘ get caug ht’ striking a patient i to
appear busy when tlie supervisor makes her rounds, and not to speak
to her unless first spoken to. (c was noted that some attendants
watch for her approach and warn the other attendants so that no one
will gct c:iu£hr doing undesirable arts. Some attendants will save
work for when the supervisor is present so they will be busy and
will not be #ivcn additional tasks. In most attendants the change
is not so obvious, depending largely on the individual attetidant,
rhe supervisor, and the ward situation. Ifowevet, with nearly alt
attendants there is some change in behaviour when an official, such
a s a supervisor, is presenr. There is no open flouting of the rules
and regulations................... ^
From a consideration of make-work it is only a step to consideration
of other standards of work activity for which
appearances must be maintained, such as pace, personal
interest, economy, accuracy, etc. 3 And from a consideration
of work standards in general it is only a step to consideration
of other major asp ects of decorum, instrumental and moral,
in work places, such a s : mode of d ress; permissible sound
le v e ls ; proscribed diversions, indulgences, and affective
expressions; etc.
It was .suggested earlier that when one’s activity occurs
in the presence of other persons, some asp ects of the activity
are expressively accentuated and other aspects, which mi.tjht
discredit the fostered impression, are suppressed. It is d e a r
that accentuated facts make their appearance in what we
have called a front region; it should be just as clear that
there may be another region—a back region or backstage—
where the suppressed facts make an appearance.
A back region or backstage may be defined as a place,
relative to a given performance, where the impression fostered
by the performance is knowingly contradicted as a matter of
course. There are, of course, many characteristic functions
of such places. It is here that the capacity of a performance
to express something beyond itself may be painstakingly
fabricated; it is here that illusions and im pressions are
openly constructed. Here grades of ceremonial equipment,
such as different types of liquor or clothes, can be hidden
1Katherine Archibald, Wartime Shipyard (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California P ress, 1947), p. 159-
2 Willoughby, op. cit., p. 4 3.
^An analysis of some major work standards may be found in Gross, op. c il,t
from which the above examples of such standards are taken.
69
so that the audience will not be able to see the treatment
accorded them in comparison with the treatment that could
have been accorded them. Here devices such as the telephone
are sequestered so that users will be able to use them
'p riv a te ly .’ Here costumes and other parts of personal front
may be adjusted and scrutinized for flaws. Here the team
can run through its performance, checking for offending expressions
when no one is present to be affronted by them;
here poor members of the team, who are expressively inept,
can be schooled or dropped from the performance. Here the
performer can relax; he can drop his front, forgo speaking his
lines, and step out of character. Simone de Beauvoir provides
a rather vivid picture of this backstage activity in describing
situations from which the male audience is absent.
What gives value to such relations among women is rhe truthfulness
they imply. Confronting man woman is always play-acting; she lies
when she makes believe that she accepts her status as the inessential
other, she lies when she presents to him an imaginary personage
through mimicry, costumery, studied phrases. T hese histrionics
require a constant ten sio n : when with her husband, or with her lover,
every woman is more or le s s conscious of the thought: 'I am not being
myself^* the male world is harsh, sharp edged, its voices arc too
resounatng, the lights ate too crude, the contacrs rough. With other
women, a woman i s behind the s c e n e s ; she is polishing her equipment,
but not in b attle; she is getting her costume together, preparing her
make-up, laying out her ta c tic s ; she is lingering in dressing-gown and
slippers in the wings before making her entrance on the stag e; she
likes this warm, easy, relaxed atmosphere . . . .
For some women this warm and frivolous intimacy is dearer than
the serious pomp of relations with men. 1
Very commonly the back region of a performance is located
at one end of the place where the performance is presented,
being cut off from it by a partition and guarded passageway.
By having the front and back regions adjacent in this way,
a performer out in front can receive backstage assistan ce
while the performance is in progress and can interrupt his
performance momentarily for brief periods of relaxation. In
general, of course, the back region will be the place where
the performer can reliably expect that no member of the
audience will intrude.
Since the vital se crets of a show are visible backstage
and since performers behave out of character while there,
it is natural to expect that the passage from the front region
to the back region will be kept closed to members of the
audience or that the entire back region will be kept hidden
from them. This is a widely practised technique of impression
management, of which some illustrations and implications
are given below.
First, we often find that control of backstage plays a
significant role in the process of 'work control’ whereby
l de Beauvoir, op. ciL, p. 54 J.
70
individuals attempt to buffer them selves from the deterministic
demands that surround them. If a factory worker is to
succeed in giving the appearance of working hard all day,
then he must have a safe place to hide the jig that enables
him to turn out a day’s work with le ss than a full day’s effort. 1
If the bereaved are to be given the illusion that the dead
one is really in a deep and tranquil sleep, then the undertaker
must be able to keep the bereaved from the workroom where
the corpses are drained, stuffed, and painted in preparation
for their final performance.2 In many service trades, the
customer is asked to leave the thing that needs service
and to go away so that the tradesman can work in private.
When the customer returns for his automobile—or watch, or
trousers, or w ireless—it is presented to him in good working
order, an order that incidentally conceals the amount and
kind of work that had to be done, the number of m istakes
that were first made before getting it fixed, and other details
the client would have to know before being able to judge
the reasonableness of the fee that is asked of him.
Service personnel so commonly take for granted the right
to keep the audience away from the back region that attention
is drawn more to ca se s where this common strategy cannot
be applied than to ca se s where it can. For example, the
American filling station manager has numerous troubles in
this regard. 3 If a repair is needed, customers often refuse to
leave their automobile overnight or all day, in trust of the
establishment, as they would do had they taken their automobile
to a garage, Further, when the mechanic makes repairs
and adjustments, customers often feel they have the right to
watch him as he does his work. If an illusionary service is
to be rendered and charged for, it must, therefore,- be rendered
before the very person who is to be taken in by it. Customers,
in fact, not only disregard the right of the station personnel
to their own back region but often also define the whole
station as a kind of open city for males, -a place where an
individual runs the risk of getting his suit dirty and therefore
1See Orvis Collins, Melville Dalton, and Donald Koy, *Restriction of
Output and Social Cleavage in Industry,' Applied Anthropology (now
Human Organization), IV, pp. 1-1*1, esp. p. 9.
2Mr. liabcnstein has suggested tn seminar that in some sta te s the undertaker
has a legal right to prevent relatives of the deceased from entering
the workroom where the corpse is in preparation. Presumably the
.sight of what has to be done to the dead to make them look attractive
would be roo great a shock for non-professionals and especially for
kinsfolk ol tin* deceased. Mr. Habenstein also suggests that kinsfork
may want to be kept from the undertaker's workroom because of their
own fear of iheir own morbid curiosity.
^ T h e statements which follow are taken from a study by Social Research
Inc. of two hundred sm all-business managers.
71
has the right to demand full backstage privileges. Male
m otorists will saunter in, tip back their hats, spit, swear,
and ask for free service or free travel advice. They will
barge in to make familiar use of the toilet, the station’s tools,
or the office telephone; and in order to avoid traffic lights,
motorists will cut right across the station driveway, oblivious
to the manager’s proprietary rights.
The study of the island hotel previously cited provides
another example of the problems workers face when they
have insufficient control of their backstage. Within the hotel
kitchen, where the gu ests’ food was prepared and where the
staff ate and spent their day, crofters’ culture tended to
prevail, involving a characteristic pattern of clothing, food
habits, table manners, language, employer-employee relations,
cleanliness standards, etc. T his culture was felt to be
different from, and lower in esteem than, British m iddle-class
culture, which tended to prevail in the dining room and other
places in the hotel. The. doors leading from the kitchen to
the other parts of the hotel were a constant sore spot in the
organization of work. The maids wanted to keep the doors
open to make it easier to carry food trays back and forth, to
gather information about whether guests were ready or not for
the service which was to be performed for them, and to retain
as much contact as possible with the persons they had come
to work to learn about. Since the maids played a servant role
before the guests, they, felt they did not have too much to
lose by being observed in their own milieu by guests who
glanced into the kitchen when passing the open doors. The
managers, on the other hand, wanted to keep the door closed
so that the m iddle-class role imputed to them by the guests
would not be discredited by a disclosure of their crofter habits.
Hardly a day passed when these doors were not angrily banged
shut and angrily banged open. A kick-door of the kind modern
restaurants use would have provided a partial solution for
the staging problem. A small g la ss window in the doors
that could act as a peephole—a stage device used by many
small p laces of business—would also have been helpful.
Another interesting example of backstage difficulties is
found in radio and television broadcasting work. In these
situations, back region tends to be defined' a s all places
where the camera is not focussed at the moment or all places
out of range of ' l i v e ’ microphones. Thus an announcer may
hold the sponsor’s product up at arm’s length in front of the
camera while he holds his nose with his other hand, his face
being out of the picture, as a way of joking with his teammates.
Professionals, of course, tell many exemplary tales
72
of how peisons who ihoughr they were backstage were in
facc on the air and how this backstage conduct discredited
the definition of the situation being maintained on the air.
For technical reasons, then, the walls that broadcasters
have to hide behind can be very treacherous, tending to fall
at the flick of a switch or a turn ot the camera. Broadcasting
artists must live with this staging contingency,
A final example of backstage difficulties is found among
exalted persons. P ersons may become so sacred that the
only fitting appearance they can make is in the centre of a
retinue and ceremony; it may be thought improper for them
to appear before others in any other context, as such informal
appearances may be thought to discredit the magical attributes
imputed to them. Therefore members of the audicnce must
be prohibited from all the places the exalted one is likely
to relax in, and if the place for relaxation is large, as in the
case of the Chinese Emperor in the nineteenth century, or it
there is uncertainty about where the exalted one will be,
problems of trespass become considerable. Thus Queen
Victoria enforced the rule that anyone seeing her approach
when driving in her pony-cart on the palace grounds should
turn his head or walk in another direction, and sometimes
great statesm en were required to sacrifice their own dignity
and jump behind the shrubbery when the queen unexpectedly
approached. 1
While these examples of back region difficulty are extreme,
it would seem that no social establishment can be studied
where some problems associated with backstage control do
not occur.
Work and recreation regions represent two areas for
backstage control. Another area is suggested by the very
widespread tendency in our society to give performers control
over the place in which they attend to what are called
biological needs. In our society, defecation involves an
individual in activity which is defined as inconsistent with
the cleanliness and purity standards expressed in many of our
performances. Such activity also causes the individual to
disarrange his clothing and to 'g o out of play,* that is, to
drop from his face the expressive mask that he employs in
face-to-face interaction. At the same time ic becomes difficult
for him to reassem ble his personal front should the need to
enter into interaction suddenly occur. Perhaps that is a
reason why toilet doors in our society have locks on them.
When asleep in bed the individual is also immobilized,
* t'o n so n h y, of>. c i t . , p J2.
73
expressively speaking, and may not be able to bring himself
into an appropriate position for interaction or bring a sociable
expression to his face until some moments after being
wakened, thus providing one explanation of the tendency
to remove the bedroom from the active part of the house.
The utility of such seclusion is reinforced by the facc that
sexual activity is likely to occur in bedrooms, a form of
interaction which also renders its performers incapable of
immediately entering into an ocher interaction.
One of the most interesting times to observe impression
management is the moment when a performer
leaves the back region and enters the place where the
audience is to be found, or when he returns therefrom,
for at these moments we can detect a wonderful putting on
and taking off of character. Orwell, speaking of waiters,
and speaking from the backstage point of view of dishwashers,
provides us with an exam ple:
1c is an instructive sigh: co see a waiter going into a hotel
dining-room. As he p a s s e s the door a sudden change comes over
him. The set of h is shoulders a lte rs; all the dirt and hurry and
irritation have dropped off in an instant. He glides over the carpec,
with a solemn priest-like air. I remember our assista n t maitre d*hoielt
a fiery Italian, pausing at the dining-room door to address his apprentice
who had broken a bottle of wine. Shaking his fist above his head
he yelled (luckily the door was more or le s s soundproof), ” Tu me fais —
Do you call yourself a waiter, you young bastard? You a waiterl
You re not fit to scrub floors in ihe brothel your mother came from.
Mttffuereau! M
Words failing him, he turned to the door; and a s he opened it
lie delivered a final insult in the same manner a s Squire Uesrcrn
in Tom Jones.
Then he entered the dining-room and sailed across il dish in
hand, graceful as a swan. Ten seconds loiter he was bowing reverently
to a customer. And you could not help thinking, a s ^ou saw him
bow and smile, with that benign smile of the trained waiter, that rho
customer was put to shame by having such an aristocrat co serve him. 1
The decline of domestic service lias forced quick changes
of the kind mentioned by Orwell upon the middle-class housewife.
In serving a dinner for friends she must manage the
kitchen dirty work in such a way as to enable her co switch
back and forth between the roles of domestic and hostess,
altering her activity, her manner, and her temper, as she
1George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London (London.* Seeker
and Warburg, 1951), pp. 68-69* Another illustration is provided by
Moqica Dickens, One Pair o f Hands (Mermaid Books; London: Michael
Joseph, 1952), p. 13:
’ T h e said maid—her name was Addie, 1 discovered—and the two
w aitresses were behaving like people acting in a play. They would
sw eep into the kitchen a s if coming off stage into the wings, with trays
held high and a tense expression of hauteur still on their faces; relax
for a moment in the frenzy of getting the new dishes loaded, and glide
off again with faces prepared to make their next entrance. The cook
and 1 were left like stage hands among rhe debris, as if having.seen
a glimpse of another world, we almost listened for the applause of the
unseen audience.1
74
p a s s e s in and oiic of the dining room. Etiquette provide
helpful directions for facilitating such changes.
The line dividing front and back regions is illustrated
everywhere in our society. As suggested, the bathroom and
bedroom, in all but lower-class homes, are places from which
the downstairs audience can be excluded. Bodies that are
cleansed, clothed, and made up in these rooms can be presented
to friends in others. In the kitchen, of course, there
is done to food what in the bathroom and bedroom is done to
the human body. It is, in fact, the presence of these staging
devices that distinguishes middle-class living from lowercla
ss living. But in all c la s s c s in our society there is a
tendency to make a division between the front and back parts
of residential exteriors. The front tends to be relatively
well decorated, well repaired, and tidy; the rear tends to be
relatively unprepossessing. Correspondingly, social adults
enter through the front, and often the socially incomplete—
domestics, delivery men, and children—enter through the rear.
While we are familiar with the stage arrangements in and
around a dwelling place, we tend to be le ss aware of other
stage arrangements. In American residential neighbourhoods,
boys of eight to fourteen and other profane persons appreciate
that entrances to back lanes and alleys lead somewhere and
are to be used; they see these openings in a vivid sense
that will be lost to them when they become older. Similarly,
janitors and scrubwomen have a clear perception of the small
doors that lead to the back regions of business buildings
and are intimately familiar wich the profane transportation
system for secretly transporting dirty cleaning equipment,
large stage props, and themselves. There is a similar arrangement
in stores, where places 'behind the counter’ and the
storeroom serve as back regions.
Given the values of a particular society, it is apparent
that the backstage character of certain places is built into
them in a material way, and that relative to adjacent areas
these places are inescapably back regions. In our society
the decorator’s art often does this for us, apportioning dark
colours and open brickwork to the service parts of buildings
and white plaster to the front regions. P ieces of fixed equipment
add permanency to this division. Employers complete
the harmony by hiring persons with undesirable visual
attributes for back region work,-1 placing persons who ‘niak?
a good appearance’ in the front regions. (This involves a
1Reserves of unimpressive-looking labour can be used not only for activity
that must be concealed from the audience but also for activity that
need not but can be concealed. Mr Hughes has suggested in seminar
7S
kind of ecological sorting that is well known but little studied.)
And often it is expected that those who work backstage will
achieve technical standards while those who work in the
front region will achieve expressive ones.
The decorations and permanent fixtures in a place where
a particular performance is usually given, as well as the
performers and performance usually found in it, tend to fix a
kind of spell over it; even when the customary performance
is not being given in it, the place tends to retain some of
its front region character. Thus a cathedral and a schoolroom
retain something of their tone even when only repairmen are
present, and while these men may not behave reverently while
doing their work, their irreverence tends to be of a structured
kind, specifically oriented to what in some sense they ought
to be feeling but are not. So, too, a given place may become
so identified as a hide-out where certain standards need not
be maintained that it becomes fixed with an identity as a
back region. Hunting lodges and locker rooms in athletic
social establishm ents may serve as illustrations. Summer
resorts, too, seem to fix perm issiveness regarding front,
allowing otherwise conventional people to appear in public
stree ts in costumes they would not ordinarily wear in the
presence of strangers. So, too, criminal hangouts and even
criminal neighbourhoods are to be found, where the act of
being ’ le g it’ need not be maintained. An interesting example
of this is said to have existed in P a ris:
’ In the seventeenth century, therefore, in order to become a thorough
Argotier, it was necessary not only to solicit alms like any mere
heggar, but also to p o s s e s s the dexterity of the cut-purse and the
thief. T hese arts were to be learned in the places which served
a s the habitual rendezvous of the very dregs of society, a/id which
were generally known as the Cours des Miraclcs. These houses, ot
rather resorts, had been so called, if we are to believe a writer of the
early part of the seventeenth century, ' Because rogues . . . and others,
who have all day been cripples, maimed, dropsical, and beset with
every so n of bodily ailment, come home at night, carrying under theit
Arms a sirloin of beef, a joint of veal, or a leg of mutton, not forgetting
to hang a bottle of wine to their belts, and, on entering the court,
they throw aside rheir crutches, resume their healthy and lusty
appearance, and, in imitation of the ancient Bacchanalian revelries,
dance all kinds of dances with their trophies in their hands, whilst
the host is preparing their suppers. Can there be n greater miracle
than is to be seen in this court, where the maimed walk upright? ' 1
In back regions such as these, the very fact that an important
effect is not striven for tends to set the tone for interaction,
leading those who find them selves there to act as if they
were on familiar terms with one another in all matters.
cli.it Negro employees can more easily than otherwise be given staff
status in American factories if, as in the case of chemists, they can
be sequestered from the main regions of factory operation.
'P a u l LaCroix, Manners, Custom, and Dress during the Middle A g es and
during the R enaissance Period (London : Chapman and Hall, 1876), p. 471.
76
However, while there is a tendency for a region to become
identified as the front region or back region of a performance
with which it is regularly associated, still there are many
regions which function at one time and in one sense as a
front region and at another time and in another se n se as a
back region. Thus the private office of an executive is
certainly the front region where his status in the organization
is intensively expressed by means of the quality of his office
furnishings. And yet it is here that he can take his jacket
off, loosen his tie, keep a bottle of liquor handy, and act in
a chummy and even boisterous way with fellow executives
of his own rank. 1 Similarly, of a Sunday morning, a whole
household can use the wall around its domestic establishment
to conceal a relaxing slovenliness in dress and civil
endeavour, extending to all rooms the informality that is
usually restricted to the kitchen and bedrooms. So, too, in
American m iddle-class neighbourhoods, on afternoons the
line between the children’s playground and home may be
defined as backstage by mothers, who p ass along it wearing
jeans, loafers and a minimum of make*up, a cigarette dangling
from their lips as they push their baby carriages and openly
talk shop with their colleagues. So also, in working-class
quartiers in P aris in the early morning, women feel they have
a right to extend the backstage to their circle of neighbouring
shops, and they patter down for milk and fresh bread, wearing
bedroom slippers, bathrobe, hairnet, and no make-up. And,
of course, a region that is thoroughly established as a front
region for the regular performance of a particular routine
often functions as a back region before and after each performance,
for at these times the permanent fixtures may undergo
repair, restoration, and rearrangement, or the performers may
hold d ress rehearsals. To see this we need only glance
into a restaurant, or store, or home, a few minutes before
chese establishm ents are opened to us for the day. In
general, then, we must keep in mind that when we speak of
front and back regions we speak from the reference point of a
particular performance, and we speak of the function that the
place happens to serve at that time for the given performance.
It was suggested that persons who co-operate in staging
' The fact that a small private office can be transformed into a back region
by the manageable method of being the only one in it provides one reason
why stenographers sometimes prefer to work in a private office as opposed
to a large office floor. On a large open floor someone is always likely
to be present before whom an impression of industriousness must be
maintained; in a small office all pretence of work and decorous behaviour
can be dropped when the boss is out. See Richatd Rencke, ' The Status
Characteristics of Jobs in a F actory' (Unpublished Master's thesis,
Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1953), P- 53*
77
the same team-performance tend to be in a familiar relarion
to one another. This familiarity tends to be expressed only
when the audience is not present, for it conveys an impression
of self and team-mate which is ordinarily inconsistent with
the impression of self and team-mate one wants to sustain
before the audience. Since back regions are typically out of
bounds to members of the audience, it is here that we may
expect reciprocal familiarity to determine the tone of social
intercourse. Similarly, it is in the front region that we may
expect a tone of formality to prevail.
Throughout our society there tends to be one informal or
backstage language of behaviour, and another language of
behaviour for occasions when a performance is being presented.
The backstage language co n sists of reciprocal first-naming,
co-operative decision-making, profanity, open sexual remarks,
elaborate griping, smoking, rough informal dress, ' s l oppy'
sitting and standing posture, use of dialect or sub-standard
speech, mumbling and shouting, playful aggressivity and
'kidding,' inconsiderateness for the other in minor but
potentially symbolic acts, minor physical self-involvements
such as humming, whistling, chewing, nibbling, belching, and
flatulence. The frontstage behaviour language can be taken
as the absence (and in some sense the opposite) of this. In
general, then, backstage conduct is one which allows minor
acts which might easily be taken as symbolic of intimacy
and disrespect for others present and for the region, while
front region conduct is one which disallows such potentially
offensive behaviour. *
By invoking a backstage style, individuals can transform
any region into a backstage. Thus we find that in many
social establishm ents the performers will appropriate a section
of the front region and by acting there in a familiar fashion
symbolically cut it off from the rest of the region. For
instance, in some restaurants in America, especially those
called 'one-arm joints,’ the staff will hold court in the booth
farthest from the door or clo sest to the kitchen, .inJ there
conduct themselves, at least in some respects, as if they
were backstage.
More important, we ought not to expect that in concrete
situations we will find pure examples of informal conduct or
1Ic may be noted (hat backstage behaviour has what psychologists might
call a ’ regressive* character. The question, of course, is whether a
backstage gives individuals an opportunity ro regress or whether regression,
in the clinical sense, is bnckstagc conduct invoked on
inappropriate occasions for motives that are not socially approve*!.
re
formal conduct, although there is usually a tendency to move
the definition of the situation in one of these two directions.
We will not find rhese pure ca se s because team-mates with
respect to one show will he to some degree performers and
audience for another show, and performers and audience for
one sliow wjil to some extent, however slight, be team-mates
with respect to another show. 1’hus in a concrete situation
we may expect a predominance of one style or the oclier, with
some feelings of guilt or doubt concerning the actual
combination or balance that is achieved between the two
styles.
I would like to em phasize the fact chat activity in a
concrete situation is always a compromise between the formal
and informal styles by reference to backstage and backstage
activity. Three common limitations on backstage informality
may be cited. First, when the audience is not present, each
member of the team is likely to want to sustain the impression
that lie can be trusted with the secrets of the team and that
he is not likely to play his part badly when the audience is
present. While each team member will want the audience to
think of him as a worthy character, he is likely to want his
team-mates to think of him as a loyal, well-disciplined
performer. Secondly, there are often moments backstage
when the performers will have to sustain one another’s morale
and maintain the impression that the show that is about to
be presented will go over well or that the show that has just
been presented did not really go over so badly. Thirdly, if
the team contains representatives of fundamental social
divisions, such as different age-grades, different ethnic
groups, etc., then some discretionary limits will prevail on
freedom of backstage activity. Here, no doubt, the most
important division is the sexual one, for there seems to be
no society in which members of the two sexes, however closely
related, do not sustain some appearances before each other.
In America, for instance, we learn the following about West
Coast shipyards:
In iheir ordinary relationships with women workers most of the
men were courteous and even gallant. As the women infiltrated the
hulls and the remoter shacks of the yard, the men amiably removed
their galleries of nudes and pornography from the walls and retired
them to the gloom of the tool box. In deference to the presence of
'l a d i e s ,’ manners were improved, faces were shaved more often, and
language was toned down. The taboo against improprieties of speech
within earshot of women was so extreme a s to be amusing, patticularly
since the women themselves frequently gave audible proof that the
forbidden words were neither unfamiliar nor disturbing to them. Yet
1 have often seen men who wanted to use strong language, and with
good excuse for it, flush with sudden embarrassment and drop their
79
voices to a mutcer on becoming conscious of a feminine audience. In
ihe lunchrime companionship of men and women workers and in the
casual char at any leisure moment, in all rhar pertained to familiar
social contacts, even amid the unfamiliar surroundings of the shipyards»
the men preserved almost intact the pattern of behaviour which they
practised at home; the respect fot the decent wife and the good mother,
the circumspect friendliness with the sister, and even (he )>rotecttvo
affection for the inexperienced daughter of the family. 1
Chesterfield makes a similar suggestion about another society:
In mixed companies with your equals (for in mixed companies rill
people are to a certain degree equal) greater ease and liberty are
allowed; but they too have tbeir bounds within bicnscauce. There is
a social respect n ecessary; you may start your own subject of
conversation with modesty, taking great cate, however, de ne jttmnis
parler de conies duns la maison d un pendtu Your words, gestures,
and attitudes, have a greater degree of latitude, though by no means
an unbounded one. You may have your hands in your pockets, take
snuff, sit, stand, or occasionally walk, -as vou lik e; but I believe you
would nor think it very bienseanl to whistle, put your hat on, loosen
y our garters or your buckles, lie down upon a couch, Or go to bed
*ind welter in an <?asy chair. T hese are negligences and freedoms
which one can only take when quite alone; they are injurious to
superiors, shocking and offensive to equals, brutal and insulting to
inferiors. 3
K insey’s data on the extent of the nudity taboo between
husband and wife, especially in the older generation of the
American working c lass, documents the same point. 3
In saying that performers act in a relatively inlormal,
familiar, relaxed way while backstage and are on their ijuard
when giving a performance, it should not be assumed that the
pleasant interpersonal things of life—courtesy, warmth,
generosity, and pleasure in the company of others—are always
reserved for those backstage and that suspiciousness,
snobbishness, and a show of authority are reserved for front
region activity. Often it seem s that whatever enthusiasm
and lively interest we have at our disposal we reserve for
those before whom we are putting on a show and that the
surest sign of backstage solidarity is to feel that it is safe
to lapse into an associable mood of sullen, silent irritability.
It is interesting to note that while each team will be in
a position to appreciate the unsavoury 'unperformed' aspects
of its own backstage behaviour, it is not likely ro be in a
position to come to a similar conclusion about the teams
with which it interacts. When pupils leave the schoolroom
and go outside for a rec ess of familiarity and misconduct,
they often fail to appreciate that their teachers have retired
to a 'common room’ to swear and smoke in a similar recess
1Archibald, op. cit., pp. 16-17.
2 le tte r s o f l.ord Chesterfield to His Son ( hveryman's ed.; New York:
Dutton, 1929), P- 239.
3 Alfred C. Kinsey, U'ardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde h. Martin, JSexual
Behaviour in the Human Male (Philadelphia: Saunders, 1948), p. h»<>-367.
80
of backstage behaviour. We know, of course, that a team
with only one member can take a very dark view of itself and
that not a few clinical psychologists attempt to alleviate
this guilt, making their living by telling individuals the facts
of other people’s lives. Behind these realizations about
oneself and illusions about others is one of the important
dynamics and disappointments of social mobility, be it mobility
upward, downward, or sideways. In attempting to escape
from a two-faced world of front region and back region
behaviour, individuals may feel that in the new position they
are attempting to acquire they will be the character projected
by individuals in that position and not at the same time a
performer. When they arrive, of course, they find their new
situation has unanticipated sim ilarities with their old one;
both involve a presentation of front to an audience and both
involve the presenter in the grubby, gossipy business of
staging a show.
It is sometimes thought that coarse familiarity is merely
a cultural thing, a characteristic, say, of the working cla sse s,
and that those of high estate do not conduct themselves in
this way. The point, of course, is that persons of high rank
tend to operate in small team s and tend to spend much of
their day engaged in spoken performances, whereas workingc
la s s men tend to be members of large team s and tend to
spend much of their day backstage or in unspoken performances.
Thus the higher one’s place in the status pyramid,
the smaller the number of persons with whom one can be
familiar, 1 the le ss time one spends backstage, and the more
*An interesting limiting instance occurs in the case of heads of states,
who have no team-mates. Sometimes these individuals may make use
of a se t of cronies to whom they give a courtesy rank of team-mate when
moments of relaxing recreation ate called for. Court equerries often
play this role. Ponsonby, op. cit., p. 269, illustrates this in his
description of King Edward’s visit to the Danish Court:
'Dinner consisted of several courses and many wines, and usually
lasted one and a half hours. M'e then all filed out ami in arm to the
drawing-room, where again the King of Denmark and all the Danish
Royal Family circled round the room. At eight we retired to our rooms
to smoke, but as -the Danish suite accompanied us the conversation was
limited to polite enquiries into the customs of the two counrries. At
nine we returned to the drawing-room where we played round games,
generally Loo, without stakes.
1At ten we were mercifully released and allowed to go to our rooms.
T hese evenings were a high trial to everyone, but the King behaved
like an angel, playing whist, which was then quite out of date, for very
low points. After a week of this, however, he determined to play bridge,
but only after the King of Denmark had retited to bed. We went through
the usual routine till ten o ’clock, and then Prince Demidoff of the Russian
Legation came to the King’s rooms and played bridge with the King,
Seymoure Fortescue, and myself, for fairly high points. Ve continued
thus till the end of the visit, and it was a pleasure to relax ourselves
from the stiffness of the Danish Court.1
81
likely it is that one will be required to be polite as well as
decorous. However, when the time and company are right,
quite sacred performers will act, and be required to act, in a
quite vulgar fashion. i'or numerical and strategic reasons,
however, we are likely to learn that labourers use a backstage
manner and unlikely to learn that lords use it too.
A final point must be suggested about backstage relationships.
When we say that persons who co-operate in presenting
a performance may express familiarity with one another when
not in the presence of the audience, it must be allowed that
one can become so habituated to one’s front region activity
and front region character that it may be necessary to handle
o n e’s relaxation from it as a performance. One may feel
obliged, when backstage, to act out of character in a familiar
fashion and this can come to be more of a pose than the
performance for which it was meant to provide a relaxation.
In this chapter I have spoken of the utility of control over
backstage and of the dramaturgical trouble that arises when
this control cannot be exerted. 1 would like now to consider
the problem of controlling ac c e ss to the front region, but in
order to do so it will be necessary to extend a little the
original frame of reference.
Two kinds of bounded regions have been considered:
front regions where a particular performance is or may be in
progress, and back regions where action occurs that is related
to the performance but inconsistent with the appearance
fostered by the performance. It would seem reasonable to
add a third region, a residual one, namely, all places other
than the two already identified. Such a region could be called
'th e outside.' The notion of an outside region that is neither
front nor back with respect to a particular performance conforms
to our common-sense notion of social establishm ents, for
when we look at most buildings we find within them rooms
that are regularly or temporarily used as back regions and
front regions, and we find that the outer walls of the building
cut both types of rooms off from the outside world. Those
individuals who are on the outside of the establishment we
may call outsiders.
While the notion of outside is obvious, unless we handle
it with care we will be misled and confused, for when we
shift our consideration from the front or back region to the
outside we tend also to shift our point of reference from one
performance to another. Given a particular ongoing performance
as a point of reference, those who are outside will be persons
for whom the performers actually or potentially put on a show,
82
but a show (as we shall see) different from, or all too similar
to, the one in progress. When outsiders unexpectedly enter
the front or the back region of a particular performance-inprogress,
the consequence orf their inopportune presence
can often best be studied not in terms of its effects upon
the performance in progress but rather in terms of its effects
upon a different performance, namely, the one which the
performers or the audience would ordinarily present before
the outsiders at a time and place when the outsiders would
be the anticipated audience.
In Chapter One of this report it was suggested that performers
tend to give the impression, or tend not to contradict
the impression, that the role they are playing at the time
is their most important role and that the attributes claimed
by or imputed to them are their most essential and characteristic
attributes. When individuals witness a show that was
not meant for them, they may, then, become disillusioned
about this show a s well as about the show that w as meant
for them. The performer, too, may become confused, as
Kenneth Burke su g g ests:
We are all, in our compartmentalized responses, like the man
who Is a tyrant in his office and a weakling among his family, or
like the musician who is assertive in his art and self-effacing in his
personal relationships. Such dissociation becomes a difficulty when
we attempt to unite these compartments (as, were the man who is a
tyrant in his office and a weakling in his home suddenly to employ his
wife or children, he would find his dissociative devices inadequate,
and might become bewildered and tormented). 1
The answer to this problem is for the performer to segregate
his audiences so that the individuals who witness him
in one of his roles will not be the individuals who witness
him in another of his roles. Thus some French Canadian
priests do not want to lead so strict a life that they cannot
go swimming at the beach with friends, but they tend to feel
that it is best to swim with persons who are not their
parishioners, since the familiarity required at the beach is
incompatible with the distance and respect required in the
parish. Front region control is one measure of audience
segregation. Incapacity to maintain this control leaves the
performer in a position of not knowing what character he will
have to project from one moment to the next, making it difficult
for him to effect a dramaturgical su ccess in any one of them.
It is not difficult to sympathize with the pharmacist who
ac ts like a salesman or like a begrimed stock-man to a
customer who proves to have a prescription in her hand, while
at the next moment he projects his dignified, disinterested,
'Kenneth Burke. Permanence and Change (New York: New Republic
Inc., 1953), fn. p. 309.
83
medical, professionally-spotless pose someone who happens
to want a three-cent stamp or a chocolate tudge sundae. 1
It should be clear that just as it is useful for the performer
to exclude persons from the audience who see liim in another
and inconsistent presentation, so also is it useful for the
performer to exclude from the audience those before whom
he performed in the past a show' inconsistent with the current
one. Persons who are strongly upward or downward mobile
accomplish this in a grand manner by making sure to leave
rhe place of their origins. And, on the same grounds, just
;is it is convenient to play one's different routines before
lifferent persons, so also is it convenient to separate the
different audiences one has for the same routine, since that
is the only way in which each audience can feel that while
there may be other audiences for the same routine, none is
getting so desirable a presentation o| it. Here again front
region control is important.
By proper scheduling of one’s performances, ir is possible
not only to keep one’s audiences separated from each other
(by appearing before them in different front regions or sequentially
in the same region) but also to allow a few moments
in between performances so as to extricate oneself psychologically
and physically from one’s personal front, while
taking on another. Problems sometimes arise, however, in
those social establishm ents whc-re the same or dillerent
members of the team must handle different audicnces at the
same time. If the different audiences come within hearing
distance of each other, it will be difficult to sustain the
impression that each is receiving special and unique services.
Thus, if a hostess wishes to give each of her guests a warm
special greeting or farew ell—a special performance, in f a c tthen
she will have to arrange to do this in an anteroom that
is separated from the room containing the other guests.
Similarly, in c a s e s where a firm of undertakers is required
to conduct two services on the same day, it will be necessary
to route the two audiences through the establishm ent in such
a way that their paths will not cross, lest the feeling that
the funeral home is a home away from home be destroyed.
So, too, in furniture salesrooms, a clerk who is ‘ sw itching’
a customer from one suite of furniture to another of higher
price must be careful to keep his audience out of earshot
of another clerk who may be switching another customer
from a still cheaper suite to the one from which the first
clerk is trying to switch his customer, for at such times
•See Weinlein, op. cit., pp. 147-148.
84
the suice that one clerk is disparaging will be the su ite that
the ocher clerk is praising. 1 Of course, if walls separate
the cwo audiences, the performer can sustain the impressions
he is fostering by darting rapidly from one region to another.
This staging device, possible with two examining rooms, is
increasingly popular among American dentists and doctors.
When audience segregation fails and an outsider happens
upon a performance that was not meant for him, difficult
problems in impression management arise. Two accommodative
techniques for dealing with these problems may be mentioned.
First, all those already in the audience may be suddenly
accorded, and accept, temporary backstage sta tu s and
collustvely join the performer in abruptly shifting to an act
that is a fitting one for the intruder to observe. Thus a
husband and wife in the midst of their daily bickering, when
suddenly faced with a guest of brief acquaintance, will put
aside their intimate quarrels and play out between them selves
a relationship that is almost as distant and friendly a s the
one played out for the sudden arrival. Relationships, as
well as types of conversation, which cannot be shared
among the three will be laid aside. In general, then, if the
newcomer is to be treated in the manner to which he has
become accustomed, the performer must switch rapidly from
the performance he was giving to one that the newcomer will
feel is proper. Rarely can this be done smoothly enough to
preserve the newcomer’s illusion that the show suddenly put
on is the performer’s natural show. And even if this is
managed, the audience already present is likely to feel that
what they had been taking for the performer’s essential self
was not so essential.
It has been suggested that an intrusion may be handled
by having those present switch to a definition of the situation
into which the intruder can be incorporated. A second way
of handling the problem is to accord the intruder a clear-cut
welcome as someone who should have been in the region all
along. The same show, more or less, is thus carried on,
but it is made to include the newcomer. Thus when an
individual pays an unexpected visit to his friends and finds
them giving a party, he is usually welcomed loudly and coaxed
into staying. If the welcome were not enthusiastically
extended, his discovery that he has been excluded might
discredit the front of friendliness and affection that obtains
between the intruder and his hosts on other occasions.
Ordinarily, however, neither of these techniques seem s
‘ See Louse Conant, 'T h e Borax H ouse,’ The American Mercury, XVII, 172.
85
to be very effective. Usually when intruders enter the front
region, the performers tend to get ready to begin the performance
they stage for the intruders at another time or place,
and this sudden readiness to act in a particular way brings
at le ast momentary confusion to the line of action the
performers are already engaged in. The performers will find
themselves temporarily torn between two possible realities,
and until signals can be given and received members of the
team may have no guide as to what line they are to follow.
Embarrassment is almost certain to result. Under such
circum stances it is understandable that the intruder may be
accorded neither of the accommodative treatments mentioned
but rather treated as if he were not there at all or quite
unceremoniously asked to stay out.
86
C H A P T E R IV
DISCREPANT ROLES
One overall objective of any team is to sustain the
definition of the situation that its performance fosters. This
will involve the over-communication of some facts and the
under-communication of others. Given the fragility and the
required expressive coherence of the reality that is dramatized
by a performance, there are usually facts which, if attention
is drawn to them during the performance, would discredit,
disrupt, or make useless the impression that the performance
fosters. T hese facts may be said to provide 'destructive
information.’ A basic problem for many performances, then,
is that of information control; the audience must not acquire
destructive information about the situation that is being
defined for them. In other words, a team must be able to
keep its secrets and have its secrets kept.
Before proceeding it will be convenient to add some
suggestions about types of secrets, because disclosure of
different types of secrets can threaten a performance in
different ways. The suggested types will be based upon
the function the secret performs and the relation of the secret
to the conception others have about the possessor; I will
assume that any particular secret can represent more than
one such type.
First, there are what we sometimes call ‘ dark’ secrets.
These consist of facts about a team which it knows and
conceals and which are incompatible with the image of self
that the team attempts to maintain before its audience. Dark
secrets are, of course, double se c re ts : one is the crucial
fact that is hidden and another is the fact that crucial facts
have not been openly admitted. Dark secrets were considered
in Chapter One in the section on misrepresentation.
Secondly, there are what might be called ’ strate g ic’
secrets. T hese pertain to intentions and capacities of a
team which it conceals from its audience in order to prevent
them from adapting effectively to the state of affairs the
team is planning to bring about. Strategic secrets are the
ones that businesses and armies employ in designing future
actions against the opposition. So long as a team makes no
pretence of being the sort of team that does not have strategic
87
secrets, its strategic secrets need not be dark ones. Yet it
is to be noted that even when the strategic secrets of a team
are not dark ones, still the disclosure or discovery of such
secrets disrupts the team’s performance, for suddenly and
unexpectedly the team finds it u se less and foolish to maintain
the care, reticence, and studied ambiguity of action that
was required prior to lo ss of its secrets. It may be added
that secrets that are merely strategic tend to be ones which
the team eventually discloses, perforce, when action based
upon secret preparations is consummated, whereas an effort
may be made to keep dark secrets secret forever. It may
also be added that information is often held back not because
of its known strategic importance but because it is felt that
it may someday acquire such importance.
Thirdly, there are what might be called 'in s id e ' secrets.
T hese are ones whose possession marks an individual as
being a member of a group and helps the group feel separate
and different from those individuals who are not 'in the
know.’ 1 Inside secrets give objective intellectual content
to subjectively felt social distance. Almost all information
in a social establishm ent has something of this exclusionary
function and may be seen as none of somebody’s business.
Inside se crets may have little strategic importance and
may not be very dark. When this is :he case, such secrets
may be discovered or accidentally disclosed without radically
disrupting the team performance; the performers need only
shift their secret delight to another matter. Of course, secrets
that are strategic and/or dark serve extremely well as inside
secrets and we find, in fact, that the strategic and dark
character of secrets is often exaggerated for this reason.
Interestingly enough, the leaders of a social group are sometimes
faced with a dilemma regarding important strategic
secrets. Those in the group who are not brought in on the
secret will feel excluded and affronted when the secret finally
comes to light; on the other hand, the greater the number of
persons who are brought in on the secret, the greater the
likelihood of intentional or unintentional disclosure.
The knowledge that one team can have of another’s secrets
provides us with two other types of secrets. First, there
are what might be called 'e n tru s te d ’ secrets. This is the
kind which the possessor is obliged to keep because of his
relation to the team to which the secret refers. If an individual
who is entrusted with a secret is to be the person he claim s
1Cf. Riesman's discussion of the ’ inside dopcstex,* op. c U pp. 199*209.
88
he is, 'he must keep the secret, even though it is not a secret
about himself. Thus, for example, when a lawyer discloses
the improprieties of his clients, two quite different performances
are threatened: the clien t’s show of innocence to the
court, and the lawyer’s show of trustworthiness to his client.
It may also be noted that a team’s strategic secrets, whether
dark or not, are likely to be the entrusted secrets of the
individual members of the team, for each member of the team
is likely to presenc himself to his team-mates as someone
who is loyal to the team.
The second type of information about another’s secrets
may be called ‘ free.’ A free secret is somebody e ls e ’s secret
known to oneself that one could disclose without discrediting
the image one was presenting of oneself. A team may acquire
free secrets by discovery, involuntary disclosure, indiscrcet
adm issions, re-transmission, etc. In general we muse see
that the free or entrusted secrets of one team may be the
dark or strategic secrets of another team, and so a team
whose vital secrets are possessed by others will try to oblige
the possessors to treat these secrets a s secrets that are
entrusted and not free.
This chapter is concerned with the kinds of persons who
learn about the secrets of a team and with the bases and
the threats of their privileged position. Before proceeding,
however, it should be made clear that all destructive information
is not found in secrets, and that information control
involves more than keeping secrets. For example, there
seem to be facts about almost every performance which are
incompatible with the impression fostered by the performance
but which have not been collected and organized into a usable
form by anyone. 1 These are in a sense latent secrets, and
the problems of keeping secrets are quite different from the
problems of keeping latent secrets latent. Another example
of destructive information not embodied in secrets is found
in such events as unmeant gestures, previously referred to.
These events introduce information—a definition of the situation—which
is incompatible with the projected claim s of
the performers, but these untoward events do not constitute
secrets. Avoidance of such expressively inappropriate events
is also a kind of information control but will not be considered
in th is chapter.
1 1-ot example, Wilensky, op. cit., chap. vii, reports chat a union newspaper
may have such low readership that the editor, concerned with his job,
■"ay refuse to have a professional survey made of readership so that
»either he nor anyone else will have proof of the suspected ineffectiveness
of liis role.
89
Given a particular performance as the point of reference,
we have distinguished iliree crucial roles on the basis of
function: those who perform; those performed to; arid outsiders
who neither perform in the show nor observe it. V/e may also
distinguish these crucial roles on the b asis of information
ordinarily available to those who play them. Performers are
aware of the impression they foster and ordinarily also po ssess
destructive information about the show. The audience know
what they have been allowed to perceive, qualified by what
they can glean unofficially by close observation. In the
main, they know the definition of the situation that the performance
fosters but do not have destructive information about it.
O utsiders know neither the secrets of the performance nor
the appearance of reality fostered by it. Finally, the three
crucial roles mentioned could be described on the basis of
tlie regions to which the role-player has a c c e s s ; performers
appear in the front and back regions; the audience appears
only in the front region; and the outsiders are excluded from
both regions. It is to be noted, then, that during the performance
we rpay expect to find correlation among function,
information available, and regions of access, so that, for
example, if we knew the regions into which an individual
ItaJ a c c e s s we should know the role he played and the
information he p o ssessed about the performance.
In actual fact, however, we find that the congruence
among function, information possessed, and ac ce ssib le regions
is seldom complete. Additional points of vantage relative
to the performance develop which complicate the simple
relation among function, information, and place. Some of
these peculiar vantage points are so often taken and their
significance for the performance comes to be so clearly understood
that we can refer to them as roles, although, relative
to the three crucial ones, they migfit best be called discrepant
roles. Some of the more obvious ones will be considered
here.
P erhaps the most spectacularly discrepant roles are those
which bring a person into a social establishm ent in a false
guise. Some varieties may be mentioned.
First, there is the role of 'informer.' The informer is
someone who pretends to the performers to be a member of
their team, is allowed to come backstage and to acquire
destructive information, and then openly or secretly se lls
out the show to the audience. The political, military, industrial,
and criminal variants of this role are famous. If it
appears that the individual first joined the team in a sincere
way and not with the premeditated plan of disclosing its
90
secrets, we sometimes call him a traitor, turncoat, or quitter,
especially if he is the sort of person who ought to have made
a decent team-mate. The individual who all along has meant
to inform on the team, and originally joins only for this
purpose, is sometimes called a spy. It has frequently been
noted, of course, that informers, whether traitors or spies,
are often in an excellent position to play a double game,
selling out the secrets of those who buy secrets from them.
Secondly, there is the role of 's h ill.’ A shill is someone
who acts a s though he were an ordinary member of the audience
but is in fact in league with the performers. Typically, the
shill either provides a visible model for the audience of the
kind of response the performers are seeking or provides the
kind of audience response that is necessary at the moment
for the development of the performance. Our appreciation of
this role no doubt stem s from fairgrounds, and the designations
r s h ill’ and 'c la q u e ,1 employed in the entertainment business,
have come into common usage. The following definitions
suggest the origins of the concept:
Stick, n. An individual—sometimes a local rube—hired by the
operator of a set-ioint (a 'f ix e d ' gambling booth) to win flashy prizes
so that the crowd will be induced to gamble. When the ’ live o n e s ’
(natives) have been started, the slick s are removed and deliver their
winnings to a man outside who has no apparent connection with the
joint. 1
jftiltaber, n. An employee of the circus who tushes up to the kid
shou ticket box at the psychological moment when the barker concludes
his spiel. Me and his fellow shillabers purchase tickets and p ass
*nside and the crowd of towners in from of the bally stand are not
slow in doing likewise. 2
We must not take the view that shills are found only in
non-respectable performances (even though it is only the
non-respectable shills, perhaps, who play their role systematically
and without personal illusion). For example, at
informal conversational gatherings, it is common for a wife
to look interested when her husband tells an anecdote and
to feed him appropriate leads and cues, although in fact she
has heard the anecdote many times and knows that the show
her husband is making of telling something for the first time
is only a show. A shill, then, is someone who appears to
be just another unsophisticated member of the audience and
who uses his unapparent sophistication in the interests of
the performing team.
W'e consider now another impostor in the audience, but
(his time one who uses his unapparent sophistication in the
interests of the audience, not the performers. T his type
ca n be illustrated by the person who is hired to check up on
Oavid Mauret, 'C arnival C ant,' Imericnn Speech, VI, 336.
5 VI'. \khite, 'A Circus L ist,' American Speech, 1, 283.
91
the standards that performers maintain in order to ensure
that in some respects fostered appearances will not be too
far from reality. He acts, officially or unofficially, as a
protective agent for the unsuspecting public, playing the
role of audience with more perception and ethical strictness
rhan ordinary observers are likely to employ.
Sometimes these agents play their hands in an open way,
giving the performers preliminary warning that the next performance
is abouc to be examined. Thus first night performers
and arrested persons have fair warning that anything they
say will be held a s evidence in judging them. A participant
observer who admits his objectives from the beginning gives
ihe performers whom he observes a similar opportunity.
Sometimes, however, the agent goes underground and by
acting as an ordinary gullible member of the audience gives
the performers rope with which to hang themselves. In the
everyday trades, agents who give no warning are sometimes
called 's p o tte rs ,' as they will be here, and are understandably
disliked. A salesperson may find that she has been shorttempered
and impolite to a customer who is really a company
agent checking up on the treatment bona fide customers
receive. A grocer may find that he has sold goods at illegal
prices to customers who are experts on prices and have
authority concerning them. 1
Incidentally, we must be careful to distinguish real
spotters from self-appointed ones, often called 'k n o ck e rs'
or ' wiseguys,’ who do not po ssess the knowledge of backstage
operations that they claim to possess and who are not
empowered by law or custom to represent the audience.
Today we are accustomed to think of agents who check
up on the standards of a performance and on the performers,
whether this is done openly or without warning, as part of
the service structure, and especially as part of the social
control that governmental organizations exert on behalf of
the consumer and taxpayer. Frequently, however, this kind
of work has been done in a wider social field. Offices of
heraldry and offices of protocol provide familiar examples,
these agencies serving to keep the nobility and high
1 An illustration a s tegards ctain conductors is given by W. Fred Cottrell,
The Railroader (Stanford, California: Stanford University P ress, 1940),
p. 87:
'O n ce a train conductor could demand respect of passen g ers; now
a 'spotter* may 'turn him in* if he fails to remove his cap as he enters
a car where women are seated or does not exude that oily subservience
which increasing class consciousness, diffusion of pattern from the
European and the hotel world, and the competition with other forms of
transportation have forced upon him.’
92
government officers, and those who falsely claim these
statuses, in their proper relative places.
There is yet another peculiar fellow in the audience.
Me is the one who tak es an unremarked, modest place in the
audience and leav es the region when they do, but when he
leaves he goes to his employer, a competitor of the team
whose performance he lias w itnessed, to report what he has
seen. lie is the professional shopper—the Gimbel’s man in
Macy's and the Macy’s man in Gimbel’s ; he is the fashion
spy and the foreigner at National Air Meets. The shopper
i s a person who has a technical right to see the show but
ought to have the decency, it is sometimes felt, to stay in
his own back region, for his interest in the show is from the
wrong perspective, at once more lively and more bored than
that of a thoroughly legitimate spectator.
Another discrepant role is one that is often called ihe
go-between or mediator. The go-between learns the secrets
of each side and gives each side the true impression that
he will keep its secrets; but he tends to give each side the
false impression that he is more loyal to it than to the other
side. Sometimes, as in the case of the arbitrator in some
labour disputes, the go-between may function as a means by
which two obligatorily hostile teams can come to a mutually
profitable agreement. Sometimes, as in the ca se of the
theatrical agent, the go-between may function as 3 means
by which each side is given a slanted version of the other
that is calculated to make a closer relationship between the
two sides possible. Sometimes, a s in the case of the marriagebroker,
the go-between may serve as a means of conveying
tentative overtures from one side to the other which, if openly
presented, might lead to an embarrassing acceptance or
rejection.
When a go-between operates in the actual presence of
the two team s of which he is a member, we obtain a wonderful
display, not unlike a man desperately trying to play tennis
with himself. Again we are forced to see that the individual
is not the natural unit for our consideration but rather the
team and its members. As an individual, the go-between’s
activity is bizarre, untenable, and undignified, vacillating
as it does from one set of appearances and loyalties to
another. As a constituent part of two teams, the go-between’s
vacillation is quite understandable. The go-between can
be thought of simply as a double-shill.
One illustration of the go-between’s role appears in recent
studies of the function of the foreman. Not only must he
93
accept the Juries of the director, guiding the show on the
factory floor on behalf of the managerial audience, but he
must also translate what he knows and what the audience
s e e s into a verbal line which his conscience and the audience
will be willing to accept. 1 Another illustration of the gobetween’s
role is found in the chairman of formally conducted
meetings. As soon as he has called the group to order and
introduced the guest speaker, he is likely to serve thereafter
as a highly visible model for the other listeners, illustrating
by exaggerated expressions the involvement and appreciation
they ought to be showing, and providing them with advance
cues a s to whether a particular remark ought to be greeted
by seriousness, laughter, or appreciative chuckles. Speakers
tend to accept invitations to speak on the assumption that
the chairman will 'ta k e care of them,' which he does by
being the very model of a listener and thoroughly confirming
the notion that the speech has real significance. The chairman’s
performance is effective partly because the listen ers
have an obligation to him, an obligation to confirm any
definition of the situation which he sponsors, an obligation,
in short, to follow the listening-line that he takes. The
dramaturgical task of ensuring that the speaker appears to
be appreciated and that the listeners are enthralled is of
course not easy, and often leaves the chairman in no frame
of mind to give thought to what he is ostensibly listening to.
The role of go-between seem s to be especially significant
in informal convivial interaction, again illustrating the utility
of the two-team approach. When one individual in a
conversational circle engages in action or speech which
receives the concerted attention of the others present, he
defines the situation, and he may define it in a way that is
not easily acceptable to his audience. Someone present
will feel greater responsibility for and to him than the others
feel, and we may expect this person clo sest to him to make
an effort to translate the differences between speaker and
listeners into a view that is more acceptable collectively
than the original projection. A moment later, when someone
else takes the floor, another individual may find himself
taking on the role of go-between and mediator. A spate of
informal conversation can, in fact, be seen as the formation
and re-formation of teams, and the creation and re-creation
of go-betweens.
Some discrepant roles have been suggested: the informer,
l See Rocchlisbcrger, op. cit.
94
the shill, the spotter, the shopper, and the go-between. In
each case we find an unexpected, unapparent relation among
feigned role, information possessed, and regions of access.
And in each case we deal with someone who may participate
in the actual interaction between the performers and audience.
A further discrepant role may be considered, that of the ’ nonperson;’
those who play this role are present during the
interaction but do not, in a sense, take the role either of
performer or of audience, nor do they (as do informers, shills,
and spotters) pretend to be what they are not. 1
Perhaps the cla ssic type of non-person in our society is
the servant. T his person is expected to be present in the
front region while the host is presenting a performance of
hospitality to the guests of the establishment. While in some
sen ses the servant is part of the host’s team (as I have
treated him previously), in certain ways he is defined by both
performers and audience as someone who isn’t there. Among
some groups, the servant is also expected to enter freely into
the back regions, on the theory that no impression need be
maintained for him. Mrs Trollope gives us some examples:
1 had, indeed, frequent opportunities of observing this habitual
indifference to the presence of their slaves. They calk of them, of
their condition, of their faculties, of their conduct, exactly a s if they
were incapable of hearing. 1 once saw a young lady, who, when seated
at table between a male and a female, was induced by her modesty to
intrude on the chair of her female neighbour to avoid the indelicacy
of touching the elbow of a man. T once saw this very young lady
lacing her stays with the most perfect composure before a negro
footman. A Virginian gentleman told me that ever since he had mauied,
he had been accustomed to have a negro girl sleep in the same chamber
with himself and his wife. I asked for what purpose this nocturnal
attendance was necessary? * Good H eaven1” was the reply, "If I
wanted a glass of water during the night, what would become of me." 2
T h is is an extreme example. While servants tend to be
addressed only when a 're q u e s t’ is to be given them, still
their presence in a region typically places some restrictions
upon the behaviour of those who are fully present, the more
so, apparently, when the social distance between servant
and served is not great. In the case of other servant-like
roles in our society, such as that of elevator operator and
cab-driver, there seems to be uncertainty on both sides of
the relationship as to what kind of intimacies are permissible
in the presence of the non-person.
In addition to those in servant-like roles, there are other
standard categories of persons who are sometimes treated
1l’Or a fuller treatment of the role see Goffman, op. cit., chap. xvi.
2 Nirs Trollope, V omestic Manners o f the Americans (2 v o ls .; London:
Whittaker, Treacher, 1832), II, 56-57.
95
in their presence as if they were not there; the very young,
the very old, and the sick are common examples. Further,
we find today a growing body of technical personnel—recording
stenographers, 'broadcasting technicians, photographers, secret
police, etc.—who play a technical role during important
ceremonies but who are not, in a sense, treated as if present.
It would seem that the role of non-person usually carried
with it some subordination and disrespect, but we must not
underestimate the degree to which the person who is given
or who tak es such a role can use it as a defence. And it
must be added that situations can arise when subordinates
find that the only feasible way that they can handle a superordinate
is to treat him as if he were not present. Thus, on
the island studied by the writer, when the British Public
School doctor attended patients in the homes of poor crofters,
the residents sometimes handled the difficulty of relating
them selves to the doctor by treating him, as best they could,
as if he were not present. It may also be added that a team
can treat an individual as if he were not present, doing this
not because it is the natural thing or the only feasible thing
to do, but as a pointed way of expressing hostility to an
individual who has conducted himself improperly. In such
situations, the important show is to show the outcast that
he is being ignored, and the activity that is carried on in
order to demonstrate this may itself be of secondary
importance.
We have considered some types of persons who are not,
in a simple sense, performers, audience, or outsiders, 'and
who have a c c e s s to information and regions we would not
expect of chem. We consider now four additional discrepant
roles, involving, in the main, persons who are not present
during a performance but who have unexpected information
about it.
First, there is an important role that might be called
'serv ic e sp ecialist.’ It is filled by individuals who specialize
in the construction, repair, and maintenance of the show
their clients maintain before other people. Some of these
workers, like architects and furniture salesmen, specialize
in settings; some, such as dentists, hairdressers, and
dermatologists, deal with personal front; some, such as
staff economists, accountants, lawyers, and researchers,
formulate the factual elem ents of a client’s verbal display,
that is, his team’s argument-line or intellectual position.
On the basis of concrete research it would seem that
service sp ecialists can hardly attend to the needs of an
96
individual performer without acquiring as much, or more
destructive information about some asp ec ts of the individual's
performance a s the individual himself p o sse sses. Service
sp ecialists are like members of the team in that they learn
the secrets of the show and obtain a backstage view of it.
Unlike members of the team, however, the specialist does
not share the risk, the guilt, and the satisfaction of presenting
before an audience the show to which he has contributed.
And, unlike members of the team, in learning the secrets of
others, the others do not learn corresponding secrets about
him. It is in this context that we can understand why
professional ethics often oblige the specialist to show
‘ discretion,’ i.e., not to give away a show whose secrets
h is duties have made him privy to. Thus, for example,
psychotherapists who vicariously participate so widely in
the domestic warfare of our tim es are pledged to remain silent
about what they have learned, except to their supervisors.
When the sp ecialist i s of higher general social status
than the individuals for whom he provides a service, his
general social valuation of them may be confirmed by the
particular things he must leam about them. In some situations
this becomes a significant factor in maintaining the status
quo. Thus in American towns upper-middle c la s s bankers
come to see that the owners of.some small businesses present
a front for tax purposes that is inconsistent with their banking
transactions, and that other businessmen present a confident
public front of solvency while privately requesting a loan in
an abject, fumbling manner. Middle-class doctors on charity
duty who must treat shameful d ise ase s in shameful surroundings
are in a similar position, for they make it impossible
for a low er-class person to protect himself from the intimate
insight of his superordinates. Similarly, a landlord learns
that all of his tenants act as if they were the sort who always
paid their rent on time but that for some tenants this act is
only an act. Persons who are not service specialists are
sometimes given the same disillusioning view. In many
organizations, for example, an executive officer is required
to observe the show of bustling competence that the personnel
maintains, although he may secretly p o ssess an accurate
and low opinion of some of those who work under him.
Sometimes we find, of course, that the general social
status of the client is higher than that of the sp ecialists
who are retained to attend to his front. In such cases an
interesting dilemma of status occurs, with high status and
low information control on one side, and low status and high
97
information control on the other. In such ca se s it is possible
for the sp e cia list to become overimpressed with the weakn
e s se s in the show that his betters put on and to forget the
w eaknesses in his own. In consequence, such sp e c ia lists
sometimes develop a characteristic ambivalence, feeling
cynical about the 'b e tt e r ' world for the sam e reasons that
make them vicariously intimate with it. Thus the janitor,
by virtue of the service he provides, learns v hat kind of
liquor the tenants drink, what kind of food they eat, what
letters they receive, what bills they leave unpaid, and whether
the lady of the apartment is menstruating behind her uncontaminated
front, and how clean the tenants keep the
kitcheh, bathroom, and other back regions. 1 Similarly, the
American filling station manager is in a position to learn
that a man who affects a new Cadillac may buy only a dollar’s
worth of gas, or buy a cut-price variety, or seek to wotk the
station for free service. And he also knows that the show
some men put on of masculine know-how about cars is false,
for they can neither diagnose the trouble with their car
correctly, ahhough claiming to, nor drive up to the gasoline
pumps in a competent way. So, too, persons who sell dresses
learn that customers of whom they would not have expected
it sometimes have dirty underwear and that customers
unabashedly judge a garment by its capacity to misrepresent
the facts. Those who sell men’s clothing learn that the gruff
show men maintain of being little concerned with how they
look is merely a show and that strong, silent men will try
on suit after suit, hat after hat, until they appear in the mirror
exactly as they want to see themselves. So also, policemen
Ieam from the things that reputable businessmen want them
to do and not do that the pillars of society have a slight
tilt. 2 Hotel maids learn that male guests who make p asses
at them upstairs are not quite what the seem liness u* their
downstairs conduct suggests. 3 And hotel security officers,
or house dicks, as they are more commonly ca li.d , Ieam
that a wastebasket may conceal two rejected drafts of a
suicide note :
Darling—
B y the time you gel this I will be it here nothing you ran
do will hurt m e liy
the time you read this, nothing you con do will be
able to h u rt4
l See Ray Gold, *The Chicago Flat Ja n ito r’(Unpublished 'Master's thesis,
Department of Sociology, University of Chicago, 1950), especially chap.
iv, ‘T he Garbage.’
2 Wesdey, op. cit., p. 131.
3 Writer’s srudy of an island hotel.
4 Collans, op. cit., p. 156.
98
showing that the final feelings of a desperately uncompromising
person were somewhat rehearse:! in order to strike just
the right note mid in any case were not final. Service
sp ecialists of questionable repute who maintain an office in
the back regions of a city so that clients will not be seen
seeking assistance clearly provide another example. In Mr
Hughes’ words:
common scene in fiction depicts a lady of degree seeking,
veiled and alone, the address of the fortuneteller or dte midwife of
doubtful practice in nn obscure corner of the city. The anonymity of
certain sections of cities allows people to seek specialized services,
legitimate but embarrassing a s well a s illejtimate, from persons
with whom they would not want to be seen by members of their own
social circle. •
The specialist may, of course, carry his anonymity with
him, as does the exterminator who advertises that he will
c om e to the client’s house in a van that wears a plain wrapper.
Any guarantee of anonymity is, of course, a rather blatant
claim that the client has need of it and is willing to make
use of it.
While it is plain that the specialist whose work requires
him to take a backstage view of other people’s performances
will be an embarrassment to them, it must be appreciated
that by changing the performance which serves as a point of
reference other consequences can be seen. We regularly
find that clients may retain a specialist not in order to obtain
help with a show they are putting on for others but for the
very act that is provided by having a specialist attend them—
especially if he has a higher general status than his clients.
Many women, it seems, go to beauty parlours to be fussed
over and called madam and not merely because they need to
have their hair done. It has sometimes been claimed, for
example, that in Hindu India the procurement of proper service
specialists for ritually significant ta sk s is of crucial
significance in confirming one’s own caste position. 2 In
such ca se s as these, the performer may be interested in
being known by the specialist who serves him and not by
the show that the service allows him later to perform. And
so we find that special sp ecialists arise who fulfil needs
that are too shameful for the client to take to sp ecialists
before whom he is ordinarily not shameful. Thus the performance
that a client stages for his doctor sometimes forces
the client to go to a pharmacist for abortives, contraceptives,
and venereal disease cures. 3 Similarly, in America, an
l E .C . Hughes and Helen M. Hughes, Where People Meet (Glencoe, 111.:
Free P re ss, 1952), p. 171,
2 For this and other data on India, and foe suggestions in general, I am
indebted to McKim Marriott.
•'Veinlein, op. e i t p. 106.
99
individual involved in unseemly entanglements may take
his troubles to a Negro lawyer because of the shame he might
leel before a white one. 1
It is apparent that service sp ecialists who po ssess
entrusted se crets are in a position to exploit their knowledge
in order to gain concessions from the performer whose secrets
they p ossess. The law, professional ethics, and enlightened
self-interest often put a stop to the grosser forms of blackmail,
but small concessions delicately requested are frequently
unchecked by these forms of social control. P erhaps the
tendency to place a lawyer, accountant, economist, or other
sp ecialists in verbal fronts on a retainer, and to bring those
who are on a retainer into the firm partly represents an effort
to ensure discretion; once the verbal specialist becomes
|>art of the organization, presumably new methods can be
employed to ensure Jbis trustworthiness. By bringing the
specialist into one’s organization and even one's team, there
is also greater assurance that he will employ his skills in
the interests of one’s show and not in the interests of praiseworthy
but irrelevant matters such as a balanced view, or
the presentation of interesting theoretical data to che specialist's
professional audience. 2
A note should be added about one variety of specialist
role, the role of 'training sp ecialist.’ Individuals who take
this role have the complicated task of teaching the performer
how co build up a desirable impression while at the same
time taking the part of the future audience and illustrating
by punishments the consequences of improprieties. Parents
1 William H. Hale, 'T h e Career Development of the Negro Lawyer' (Unpublished
Ph. D. dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of
Chicago, 1949), p .72.
2 The specialist in verbal fronts who is brought into the organization will
be expected to assem ble and present data in such a way a s to lend
maximum support to the claims the team is making at the tin e. The facts
of the ca se will ordinarily be an incidcnral matter, merely one ingredient
to be considered along wich others, such as the likely arguments of
one's opponents, the predisposition of the public ac large to which the
team may want to appeal for support, che principles co which everyone
concerned will feel obliged to give lip-service, etc. Interestingly enough,
the individual who helps collect and formulate the army of faces used
in a team’s verbal show may also be employed in che distinctly different
task of presenting or conveyiag this tronc in person co the audience.
It i s rhe difference between writing the ceremony for a show and
performing the ceremony in che show. Here there is a potencial dilemma.
The more the sp ecialist can be made to set aside his professional
standards and consider only che interests of the team which employs
him, the more useful may be che arguments he formulates for them;
but the more he has a reputation for being an independent professional,
interested only in the balanced facts of the case, che more effeccivc
he i s likely to be when he appears before the audience and presencs
his finJings. A very rich source of data on these matters is to be
found in Wilensky, op. cil.
100
and schoolteachers are perhaps the basic examples of this
role in our society; the sergeants who drill officer cadets
provide a further example.
Performers often feel uneasy in the presence of a trainer
whose le sso n s they have long since learned and taken for
granted. Trainers tend to evoke for the performer a vivid
image of himself that he had repressed, a self-image of someone
engaged in the clumsy and embarrassing process of
becoming. The performer can make himself forget how foolish
he once was, but he cannot make the trainer forget. As
Riezler suggests about any shameful fact, *if others know,
the fact is established and his image of himself is put beyond
his own power of remembering and forgetting.’ 1 Perhaps
there is no consistent easy stand that we can take to persons
who have seen behind our current front—persons who ‘ knew
us w hen’—if at the sam e time they are persons who must
symbolize the audience’s response to us and cannot, therefore,
be accepted as old team-mates might be.
The service specialist has been mentioned as one type
of person who is not a performer yet has ac c e ss to backregions
and destructive information. A second type is the
person who plays the role of 'confidant.' Confidants are
persons to whom the performer co n fesses his sins, freely,
detailing the sense in which the impression given during a
performance was merely an impression. Typically confidants
are located outside and participate only vicariously in back
and front region activity. It i s to a person of th is kind,
for instance, that a husband brings home a daily tale of how
he fared in office stratagems,, intrigues, unspoken feelings,
and bluffs; and when he writes a letter requesting, resigning
from, or accepting a job it is this person who will check
through the draft to make sure the letter strikes exactly the
right note. And when ex-diplomats and ex-boxers write their
memoirs, the reading public is taken behind the scenes and
becomes a watered-down confidant of one of the great shows,
albeit one that is by then quite over.
A person in whom another confides, unlike the service
specialist, does not make a business of receiving such confidances;
he accepts the information without accepting a
fee, as an expression of the friendship, trust, and regard
the informant feels for him. We find, however, that clients
often attempt to transform their service specialists into
confidants (perhaps as a means of ensuring discretion),
R ie z le r, op. cit., p. 458.
101
especially when the work of the specialist is merely to listen
and talk, as is the c a se with priests and psychotherapists.
A third role remains to be considered. Like the role of
specialist and confidant, the role of colleague affords those
who play ir some information about a performance they do not
attend.
Colleagues may be defined as persons who present the
same routine to the same kind of audience but who do not
participate together, as team-mates do, at the same time and
place before the same particular audience. Colleagues, >as it is
said, share a community of face. In having to put on the same
kind of performance, they come to know each other’s difficulties
and points of view ; whatever their tongues, they come to speak
the same social language. And while colleagues who compete
for audiences may keep some strategic se crets from one another,
they cannot very well, hide from one another certain things
that they hid from the audience. The front that is maintained
before others need not be maintained among them selves;
relaxation becomes possible. Hughes has recently provided
a statement of the com plexeties of this kind of colleague
solidarity.
Parc of the working code of a position i s discretion*, it allows the
colleagues co exchange confidences concerning their relations co ocher
people. Among these confidences one finds expressions of cynicism
concerning their mission, cheir competence, and the foibles of cheir
superiors, them selves, their clients, their subordinates, and the public
at large. Such expressions take the burden from one's shoulders and
serve a s a defence a s well. The unspoken mutual confidence necessary
to them rests on two assumptions concerning one's fellows. The first
is that the collegaue will not m isunderstand, the second is that he
■viil not repeat to uniniated ears. To be sure that a new fellow will
not misunderstand requires a sparring match of social gestures. The
zealot who turns the sparring match into a real battle, who takes a
friendly initiation too seriously, is not likely to be trusted with the
lighter sort of comment on one's work or with doubts and misgivings;
nor can he learn those parts of the working code which arc communicated
only by hint and gesture. He is not to be trusted, for, though he is
not fit for stratagems, he is suspected of being prone to treason. In
order chat men may communicate freely and confidentially they must
be able to take a good deal of each other's sentim ents for granted.
They must feel easy about their silences a s well a s about their
utterances. 1
A good statement of some other asp ects of collegial solidarity
is given by Simone de Beauvoir; her intention is to
describe the peculiar situation of women, her effect is to tell
us about all collegial groups:
I he female friendships that she su cceeds in keeping or forming
are precious to a woman, but they are very different in kind from
relations between men. The latter communicate as individuals through
ideas and projects of personal interest, while women are confined
within their general feminine lot and bound together by a kind of immanent
complicity. And what they look for first of all among themselves
1Hughes and Hughes, K’Aere People Meet, pp. 168-169.
102
is the affirmation of the universe they have in common. They do not
d isc u ss opinions and general ideas, hue exchange confidences and
recipes; ihcy are in league co create a kind of countcr-universe, the
values of which will outweigh masculine values. Collectively they
find strength to shake off their ch ain s; they negate the sexual domination
of the males by admitting their frigidity to one another, while deriding
the men’s desires or their clum sin ess; and diev question ironically
the moral and intellectual superiority of their husbands, and of men
m g e n e r a l. _ They
compare experiences; pregnancies, births, their own and cheir
children’s illn esses, and household cares become the essential events
of the human story. Their work is not a technique; by passing on
recipes for cooking and the like, they endow it with the dignity of
a secret science founded on oral tradition. *
It should be apparent, tlien, why the terms used to designate
one’s colleagues, like the terms used to designate o n e s teammates,
come to be in-^group terms, and why terms used co
designate audiences tend to be loaded without group sentiment.
it is interesting to note that when team-mates come in
contact with a stranger who is their colleague, a sort of ceremonial
or honorific team membership may be temporarily
accorded the newcomer. There is a sort of visiting-fireman
complex whereby team-mates treat their visitor a s if he had
.suddenly come into very intimate and long-standing relationships
with them. Whatever their associational prerogatives, he
tends to be given club rights. T hese courtesies are especially
given when the visitor and the hosts happen to have received
their training in the same establishm ent or from the same
trainers, or both. Graduates of the same household, the same
professional school, the same penitentiary, the same Public
School, or the same small town provide clear examples. When
‘ old b o y s’ meet, it may be difficult to sustain backstage horseplay
and the dropping of one’s customary pose may become
an obligation and a pose in itself, but it is more difficult to
do anything else.
An interesting implication of these suggestions is that
a team which constantly performs its routines to the same
audience may yet be socially more distant from this audience
than from a colleague who momentarily comes into contact
with the team. Thus the gentry in the island community
previously mentioned knew their crofter neighbours very well,
having played out the gentry role to them since childhood.
Vet a gentry visitor to the island, properly sponsored and
introduced, could, in some sen ses, become more intimate with
the island gentry in the course of an afternoon tea than could
a crofter during a lifetime of contact with his gentry neighbours.
It may be suggested that the good will one colleague ceremonially
extends to another is perhaps a kind of peace offering:
1'ic Henuvoir. «;». c it., p. M 2.
103
'Y ou don’t cell on us and we won’t tell on you.’ This partly
explains why doctors and shopkeepers often give professional
courtesies or reductions in price to those who are in some
way connected with the trade. We have here a kinvl of bribery
of those who are well enough informed to become spotters.
The nature of colleagueship allows us to understand something
about the important social process of endogamy, whereby
a family of one cla ss, caste, occupation, religion, or ethnicity
tends to restrict its marriage ties to families of the same
status. Persons who are brought together by affinal tie s are
brought to a position from which they can see behind each
other's front; this is always embarrassing but it is le ss
embarrassing if the newcomers backstage have them selves
been maintaining the same kind of show and have been privy
to the same destructive information. A m isalliance is something
that brings backstage and into the team someone who should
be kept outside or at least in the audience.
It is to be noted that persons who are colleagues in one
capacity, and hence on terms of some reciprocal familiarity,
may not be colleagues in other respects. It is sometimes felt
that a colleague who is in other resp ects a man of lesser
power or sta tu s may over-extend his claims of familiarity and
threaten the social distance that ought to be maintained on
the b asis of these other statuses. In American society, middlec
la s s persons of low minority-group sta tu s are often threatened
this way by the presumption of their lower-class brethren.
As Hughes su g gests in regard to inter-racial colleague
relations:
The dilemma arises from che face that, while it is bad for the
profession to let laymen se e rifts in their ranks, it may be bad for che
individual to be associated in the eyes of his actual or potential patients
with persons, even colleagues, of so despised a group as the Negro.
The favoured way of avoiding the dilemma is co shun contacts with
the Negro professional. 1
Similarly, employers who patently have lower-class status,
as do some American filling station managers, often find that
their employees expect that the whole operation will be
conducted in a backstage manner and that commands and
directions will be issued only in a pleading or joking fashion.
Of course, this kind of threat is increased by the fact that
non-colleagues may similarly simplify the situation and judge
the individual too much by the collegial company he keeps.
But here again we deal with iss u e s that cannot be fully explored
unless we change the point of reference from one performance
to another.
1Hughes and Hughes, KAere People Meet, p. 172.
104
Just as some persons are thought co ca u se difficulty by
n>aking too much of their colleagueship, so others cause trouble
by not making enough of it. It is always possible for a
disaffected colleague to turn renegade and sell out to the
audience the se crets of the act that his onetime brethren are
still performing. Every role has its defrocked priests to tell
us what goes on in the monastery, and the press has always
shown a lively interest in these confessions and expose's.
Thus a doctor will describe in print how his colleagues split
fees, steal each other’s patients, and specialize in unnecessary
operations rhar require the kind of apparatus which gives the
patient a dramatic medical show for his money. 1 In Burke’s
term, we are thereby supplied with information about the
'rhetoric of medicine.’ J Of course, in a very limited sense,
whenever any non-colleague is allowed to become a confidant,
someone will have had to be a renegade.
Renegades often take a moral stand, saying that it is
better to be true to the ideals of the role than to the performers
who falsely present them selves in it. A different mode of
disaffection occurs when a colleague "goes n a tiv e ’ or becomes
a backslider, making no attempt to maintain the kind of front
which his authorized status makes or leads his colleagues
and the audience to expect of him. Such deviants are said to
'l e t down the sid e.’ Thus in the island community studied
by the writer, the inhabitants, in an effort to present them selves
a s progressive farmers to visitors from the outside world, felt
somewhat hostile to the few crofters who apparently didn’t
care and who refused to shave or wash, or construct a front
yard, or to supplant the thatched roof of their cottage with
something le s s symbolic of traditional peasant status.
Similarly, in Chicago there is an organization of blind war
veterans who, militant in their desire not to accept a pitiable
role, tour the city in order to check up on fellow blind men
who let down the side by appealing for alms on street corners.
Lewis G. Arrowsmith, 'T h e Young Doctor in New York,’ The American
'lercury, XXII, 1-10.
^Kenneth iJurlcc, A Rhetoric o f Motives (New York: Prentice-llall, 1953).
r. 171.
Applying this statement to our purposes, we could observe that even
the medical equipment of a doctor's office is not to be judged purely for
its diagnostic usefulness, hue also hfi3 a function in the rhetoric of
niedicine. Uliatevef it is a s apparatus, it also appeals as imagery; and
1f '» man has been treated to a fulsome scries of tappings, sctutinizings,
and listenings, with the aid of various scopes, meters, and gauges, he.
may feel content to have participated a s a patient in such histrionic
actiun, though absolutely no material thing has been done for him, whereas
he might count himself cheated if he were given a teal cure, but without
the pageantry.’
105
A final note must be added about colleagueship. There
are some colleague groupings whose members are rarely held
responsible for each other’s good conduct. Thus mothers are
in some resp ects a colleague grouping, and yet ordinarily the
misdeeds of one, or her confessions, do not seem to affect
closely the respect that is accorded the other members. On
the other hand, there are colleague groupings of a more
corporate character, whose members are so closely identified
in the eyes of other people that to some degree the good
reputation of one practitioner depends on the good conduct of
the others. If one member is exposed and causes a scandal,
then all lose some public repute. As cause and effect of
such identification we often find that the members of the grouping
are formally organized into a single collectivity which is
allowed to represent the professional interests of the grouping
and allpweJ to discipline any member who threatens to discredit
the definition of the siruation fostered by the other members.
Obviously, colleagues of this kind constitute a kind of team,
a team that differs from ordinary team s in that the members of
its audience are not in immediate face-to-face contact with
one another and must communicate their responses to one
another at a time when the shows they have seen are no longer
before them. Similarly, the collegial renegade is a kind of
traitor or turncoat.
T he implications of these facts about colleague groupings
force us to modify a little the original framework of definitions.
We must include a marginal type of 'w e a k 1 audience whose
members are not in face-to-face contact with one another during
a performance, but who come eventually to pool their responses
to the performance they have independently seen. Colleague
groupings are not, of course, the only se ts of performers who
find an audience of this kind. For example, a department of
state or foreign office may lay down the current official line
to diplomats who are .scattered throughout the world. In their
strict maintenance of this line, and in the intimate co-ordination
of the character and timing of their actions, these diplomats
obviously function, or are meant to function, a s a single team
putting on a single world-wide performance. But of course, in
such ca se s, the several members of the audience are not in
immediate face-to-face contact with one another.
106
C IIA P T K R V
COMMUNICATION OUT OF CHARACTER
When two team s present themselves to each other for
purposes of interaction, the members of each team tern! to
(Maintain the line that they are what they claim to be; they
tend to stay in character. Backstage familiarity is suppressed
lest the interplay of poses collapse and all the participants
find them selves on the same team, as it were, with no one
left to play to. Each participant in the interaction ordinarily
endeavours to know and keep his place, maintaining whatever
balance of formality and informality has been established for
the interaction, even to the point of extending this treatment
to his own team-mates. At the same time, each team tends to
suppress its candid view of itself and of the other team,
projecting a conception of self and a conception of other that
is relatively acceptable to the other. And to ensure that
communication will follow established, narrow channels, each
team is prepared to a s sist the other team, tacitly and tactfully,
in maintaining the impression it is attempting to foster. Of
course, at moments of great crisis, a new se t of motives may
suddenly become effective and the established social distance
between the team s may sharply increase or decrease, i but
when the crisis is past, the previous working consensus is
likely to be re-established, albeit bashfully.
Underneath and behind this working consensus, and the
gentleman’s agreement not to disrupt the interaction upon
which this limited consensus is based, there are, typically,
le ss apparent currents of communication. If these currents
were not undercurrents, if these conceptions were officially
communicated instead of communicated in a surreptitious
way, they would contradict and discredit the definitions of
the situation officially projected by the participants. When
'A n example is found in a recent study of a hospital ward on which
experimental treatment was given to volunteers suffering from metabolic
disorders about which little was known and for which little could be done.
In face of the research demands made upon the patients and the general
leeling of ho pelessness about prognosis, the usual sharp line between
doctor and patient was blunted. Doctors respectfully consulted with
tliuit patients at length about symptoms, and patients came to think of
themselves in part as research asso ciates. See Kenee Claire Fox, M
■Sociological Study of Stress : Physician and P atient on a Research Ward,’
Unpublished Ph. L). dissertation, Department of Social Relations, Kadcliff
College, 1953.
107
we study a social establishm ent, these discrepant sentim ents
are almost always found. They demonstrate that while a
performer may act as if h is response in a situation were
immediate, unthinking, and spontaneous, and while he himself
may think this to be the case, still it will always be possible
for situations to arise in which he will convey to one or two
persons present the understanding that the show he is maintaining
is only and merely a show. The presence, then, of
communication out of character provides one argument for the
propriety of studying performances in terms of team s and in
terms of potential interaction disruptions. It may be repeated
that no claim is made that surreptitious communications are
any more a reflection of the real reality than are the official
communications with which they are inconsistent; the point
is that the performer is typically involved in both, and this
dual involvement must be carefully managed le st official
projections be discredited. Of the many types of communication
in which the performer engages and which convey information
incompatible with the impression officially maintained during
interaction, four types will be considered: treatment of the
absent, staging talk, team collusion, and temporary re­
alignments.
Treatment of the Absent
When th e members of a team go backstage where the
audience cannot see or hear them, they very regularly derogate
the audience in a way that is inconsistent with the (ace-to-face
treatment that is given to the audience. In service trades,
for example, custom ers who are treated respectfully during
the performance are often ridiculed, gossiped about, caricatured,
cursed, and criticized when the performers are backstage;
here, too, plans may be worked out for 's e ll in g ’ them, or
employing 'a n g l e s ’ against them, or pacifying th e m .1
Similarly, there are very few friendship relationships in which
there is not some occasion when attitudes expressed about
the friend- behind his back are grossly incompatible with the
ones expressed about him to his face.
Sometimes, of course, the opposite of derogation occurs,
and performers praise their audience in a way that would be
impermissible for them to do in the actual presence of the
audience. But secret derogation seem s to be much more common
than secret praise, perhaps because such derogation serves
1 See, for example, the case report on 'C en tral Haberdashery' in Robert
Dubin, ed., Unman Relations in Administration (New York: Prentiec-Mall,
1951) pp. 560*563.
108
to maintain the solidarity of the team, demonstrating mutual
regard at the expense of those absent and compensating,
perhaps, for the lo s s of self-respect that may occur when the
audience must be accorded accommodative face-io-face
treatment.
Two common techniques of derogating the absent audience
may be suggested. First, we often find that when performers
are in the region in which they will appear before the audience,
and when the audience has left or not yet arrived, the performers
will sometimes play out a satire on their interaction with the
audience, and with some members of the team taking the role
of the audience. Frances Donovan, for example, in describing
the sources of fun available to sales-girls, suggests the
following:
Dot unless they are busy the girls do noc remain long apart. An
irresistible attraction draws them together a^ain. At every opportunity
they play the game of ‘ customer,* a game which they have invented and
of which they never seem to tite—a game which for caricature and
comedy, 1 have nevet seen surpassed on any stage. One girl takes the
part of the saleswoman, another that of the customer in search of a
d ress, and together they put on an act that would delight the heart of a
vaudeville audience. 1
A similar situation is described by Dennis Kincaid in his
discussion of the kind of social contact that natives arranged
for the British during the early part of British rule in India:
If the young factors found little pleasure at these entertainments,
theit hosts» for all the satisfaction they would at other times have
derived from Raji's grace and Kaliani's wit, were too uneasy to enjoy
their own party till the guests had gone. Then followed an entertainment
of which few English guests were aware. The doors would be shut,
and the dancing girls, excellent mimics like all Indians, would give
an imitation of the bored guests who had just left, and the uncomfortable
tension of the last hour would be dispelled in bursts of happy laughter.
And while the English phaetons clattered home Raji and kaliani would
be dressed up to caricature English costume ana be executing with
indecent exaggeration an Orientalized version of English dances, those
minuets and country dances which seemed so innocent and natural to
English eyes, so different from the provocative posturing of Indian
nautch-girls, but which to Indians appeared utterly scandalous. 2
Among other things, this activity seem s to provide a kind of
ritual profanation of the front region a s well a s of the
audience, 3
Secondly, we quite regularly find that a consistent
difference appears between terms of reference and terms of
1 Frances Donovan, The Saleslady (Chicago: University of Chicago P ress,
1929), p. 39. Specific examples are given on pp. 39-40.
2 Dennis Kincaid, British Social Life in India, 1608-1937 (London: Routledge,
1938), pp. 106-107.
3 A related tendency may be mentioned. In many offices chat are divided
into ranked regions, the lunchtime break will find the topmost level
leaving the social establishm ent and everyone else in it moving up a
region for lunch or for a few moments of afterlunch talk. Momentary
possession of the work-place of one's superordinates seem s to offer,
among other things, an opportunity to profanize-it in some ways.
109
address. In the presence of the audience, the performers tend
to use a favourable form of address to them. This involves,
in American society, a politely formal term, such as ' s i r ’ or
'Mr — or a warmly familiar term, such as first name or nickname,
the formality or informality being determined by the
wishes of the person addressed. In the absence of the audience,
the audience tends to be referred to by bare surname, first
name where this is not permissible to their faces, nickname,
or slighting pronunciation of full name. Sometimes members
of the audience are referred to not even by a slighting name
hut by a code title which assim ilates them fully to an abstract
category. Thus doctors in the absence of a patient may refer
to him as ‘ the c a rd ia c ’ or 't h e stre p ;’ barbers privately refer
to their custom ers as 'h e a d s of hair.’ So, too, the audience
may be referred to in their absence by a collective term combining
distance and derogation, suggesting an ingroup-outgroup
split. Thus m usicians will call customers squares; native
American office girls may secretly refer to their foreign
colleagues a s 'G . R.’s ; ’ 1 American soldiers may secretly
refer to English soldiers with whom they work a s 'L im e y s ;’ 2
pitchmen in carnivals present their spiel before persons whom
they refer to in private, as rubes, natives, or towners; and
Jew s act out the routines of the parent society for an audience
which is called the goyim. Perhaps the cruelest term of all
is found in situations where an individual asks to be called
by a familiar term to his face, and this is tolerantly done, but
in his absence he is referred to by a formal term. Thus on
the island studied by the writer any visitor who asked the
local crofters to call him by his first name was sometimes
obliged to his face, but in the absence of the visitor a formal
term of reference would push him back into what was felt to
be his proper place.
1 have suggested two standard ways in which performers
derogate their audiences—mock role-playing and uncomplimentary
terms of reference. There are other standard ways. For
example, when no member of the audience is present, the
German Refugees.’ See Gross, op. cil., p. 186.
2Sce Daniel Glaser, 'A Study of Relations between British and American
hnlisced Men at ‘SMAHF’,' Unpublished Master's th esis, Department of
Sociology, University of Chicago, 1947. Mr Glaser says, p. 16:
‘ T h e term 'lim ey ,’ as used by the Americans in place of 'B ritish,
was generally employed with derogatory implications. They would refrain
from using it in the presence of the British though the latter usually
cither didn’t know what it meant or didn’t give it a derogatory significance.
Indeed, the Americans’ care in this respect was rnuch like that of Northern
whiles who use the term 'nigger* but refrain from using it in front of a
Negro. T his nickname phenomenon is, of course, a common feature of
ethnic relations in which categoric contacts prevail.'
110
members of the team may refer to a s p ec ts of their routine in a
cynical or purely technical way, giving forceful evidence to
them selves that they do not take the same view of their activity
as the view they maintain for their audience. A further standard
derogation may be cited. When team-mates are warned that
the audience is approaching, the team-mates may hold off
their performance, purposely, until the very last minute, until
the audience almost catches a glimpse of backstage activity.
Similarly, the team may race into backstage relaxation the
moment the audience has departed. By means of this purposely
rapid switch into or out of their act, the team in a se n se can
contaminate and profanize the audience by backstage conduct,
or rebel against the obligation of maintaining a show before
the audience, or make extremely clear the difference between
team and audience, and do all of these things without quite
being caught out by the audience. Still another standard
aggression against those absent occurs in the kidding and
ribbing a member of the team receives when he is about to
leave (or merely desires to leave) his team-mates and rise or
fall or move laterally into the ranks of the audience. At such
times the team-mate who is ready to move can be treated a s
if he has already moved, and abuse or familiarity can be heaped
upon him with impunity, and, by implication, upon the audience.
And a final instance of aggression is found when someone
from the audience is officially brought into the team. Again,
he may be jokingly mistreated and 'given a hard tim e,’ for
much the same reason that he was abused when he departed
from the team he has just left. 1
The techniques of derogation which have been considered
point out the fact that, verbally, individuals are treated
relatively well to their faces and relatively badly behind their
backs. This seem s to be one of the basic generalizations
that can be made about interaction, but we should not seek in
our all-too-human nature an explanation of it. As previously
suggested, backstage derogation of the audience serves to
maintain the morale of the team. And when the audience is
present, considerate treatment of them is necessary, not for
their sake, or for their sake merely, but so that continuance
of peaceful and orderly interaction will be assured. The
‘ ac tu a l’ (eelings of the performers for a member of the audience
(.whether positive or negative) seem to have little to do with
rhe question, either as a determinant of how this member of
the audience is treated to his face or as a determinant of how
1 Cf. Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric o f Motives, p. 234 ff., who gives a social
analysis of the individual being initiated, using as a key word 'h az in g .'
H I
he is treated behind his back. It may be true that backstage
activity often takes the form of a council of war; but when
two teams meet on che field of interaction it seem s chat they
generally do not meet for peace or for war. They meet under
a temporary truce, a working consensus, in order to get their
business done.
Staging Talk
When team-mates are out of the presence of the audience,
discussion often turns to problems of staging. Questions
are raised about the condition of sign equipment; stands, lines,
and positions are tentatively brought forth and 'c le a re d ' by
the assembled membership; the merits and demerits of available
front regions are analyzed; the size and character of possible
audiences for the performance are considered; past performance
disruptions and likely disruptions are talked about; news about
the teams of one’s colleaguès is transm itted; the reception
given one’s last performance is mulled over in what are sometim
es called 'p o s t m ortem s;’ wounds are licked and morale
is strengthened for the next performance.
Staging talk, when called by other names such as gossip,
'sh o p talk,’ etc., is a well-worn notion. I have stressed it
here because it helps point up the fact that individuals with
widely different social roles live in the same climate of dramaturgical
experience. The talks that comedians and scholars
give are quite different, but their talk about their work is quite
similar. To a surprising degree, before the talk, talkers talk
to their friends about what will and will not hold the audience,
what will and will not give offence; after the talk, all talkers
talk to their friends about the kind of hall they spoke in, the
kind of audience they drew, and the kind of reception they
obtained. Staging talk has already been referred to in the
discussion of backstage activity and collegial solidarity and
will not be further discussed here.
Team Collusion
When a participant conveys something during interaction,
we expect him to communicate only through the lips of the
character he has chosen to project, openly addressing all of
his remarks to the whole interaction so that all persons present
are given equal status as recipients of communication. Thus
112
whispering, for example, is often considered improper and is
prohibited, for it can destroy the impression that the performer
is only what he appears to be and that things are as he has
claimed them to .be. 1
In spite of the expectation that everything said by the
performer will be in keeping with the definition of the situation
fostered by him, he may convey a great deal daring an interaction
chat is out of character and convey it in such a way as
to prevent the audience as a whole from realizing that anything
out of keeping with the definition of the situation has been
conveyed. Persons who are admitted to this secret communication
are placed in a collusive relationship to one another
vis-a-vis the remainder of the participants. By acknowledging
to one another that they are keeping relevant secrets from the
others present, they acknowledge to one another that the show
of candour they maintain, and the show o f being only the
characters they officially project, is merely a show. By means
of such by-play, performers can affirm a backstage solidarity
even while engaged in a performance, expressing with impunity
unacceptable things about the audience as well as things about
themselves that the audience would find unacceptable. I shall
call 'team co llu sio n ’ any collusive communication which is
carefully conveyed in such a way as to cause no threat to
the illusion that is being fostered for the audience.
One important kind of team collusion is found in the system
of secret signals through which performers can surreptitiously
receive or transmit pertinent information, requests for a s s is tance,
and other matters of a kind relevant to the successful
presentation of a performance. Typically, these staging cues
come from, or to, the director of the performance, and it greatly
sim plifies his task of managing impressions to have such a
subterranean language available. Staging cues often relate
those engaged in presenting a performance to those who are
offering assistan ce or direction backstage. Thus, by means
of a foot-buzzer, a h o stess can give directions to her kitchen
staff while acting as If she is fully involved in the meal-time
conversation. Similarly, during radio and television productions
a vocabulary of signs is employed by those in the control room
l fn recreational games, whispered huddles may be defined as acceptable,
a s they may before audiences such as children or foreigners to whom
little consideration need be given. In social arrangements in which knots
or clusters of persons hold separate conversations in each other’s visible
presence, an effort is often made by the participants in each cluster to
act as if what they are saying could be said in the other clu ste rs eveïi
though it is not.
113
to guide performers, especially a s regards their timing, without
allowing the audience to become aware that a system of control
communication is in operation in addition to the communication
in which performers and audience are officially participating.
So also, in b u siness offices, executives who want to terminate
interviews both rapidly and tactfully will train their secretaries
to interrupt interview s at the proper time with the proper excuse.
Another example may be taken from the kind of social establishment
in America in which shoes are commonly sold. Sometimes
a customer who wants a shoe of larger siz e than the one that
is available or the one that fits may be handled as follows:
To impress the customer as to the effectiveness of his stretching
the shoe, the salesm an may tell the customer chat he is going to strctch
the shoes on the thirty-four last. T his phrase tells the wrapper not to
stretch the shoes, but to wrap them up as they are and hold them undet
the counter for a short while. ‘
Staging cues are, of course, employed between performers
and a shill or confederate in the audience, as in the case of
‘ cro ss fire* between a pitchman and his plant among the
suckers. More commonly we find th ese cues employed among
team-mates while engaged in a performance, these cues in
fact providing us with one reason for employing the concept
of team instead of analyzing interaction in terms of a pattern
of individual performances. This kind of team-mate collusion,
for example, plays an important role in impression management
in American shops. Clerks in a given store commonly develop
their own cues for handling the performance presented to the
customer, although certain terms in the vocabulary seem to be
relatively standardized and occur in the same form in many
shops across the country. When clerks are members of a foreign
language group, as is sometimes the case, they may employ
this language for secret communication—a practice also
employed by parents who spell out words in front of young
children and by members of our better cla s s e s who talk to
each other in French about things they do not want their
children, their domestics, or their tradesmen to hear. However,
this tactic, like whispering, is considered crude and impolite;
secrets can be kept in this way but not the fact that secrets
are being kept. Under such circum stances, team-mates can
hardly maintain their front of sincere soliciiude for the customer
(or frankness to the children, etc.). Harmless-sounding phrases
which the customer thinks he understands are more useful to
salespersons. For example, if a customer in a shoe store
deeply desires, say, a B width, the salesm an can convince
the customer that that is what she is getting:
'D av id Geller, 'Lingo of the Shoe Salesman,' tmerican 'tprerh. I \ , -KV
.14
. . . . the salesman will call to another salesman down the aisle
and say, "B en n y what size Is this sh o e?'1 By calling the salesman,
' Benny ‘ he implies that the answer should be that the width is B. 1
An engaging illustration of this kind of collusion is given in
a paper on the Borax furniture house :
Now rhat the customer is in the store, suppose she can ’t be sold?
T he price is too high; she must consult her husband; she is only
shopping. To let her walk, (i.e., escape without buying) is treason in
a Borax House. So an S.O.S. is sent out by the salesman through one
of the numerous foot-pushes in the store. In a flash the ’ m anager' is
on the scene, preoccupied with a suite and wholly oblivious of the
Aladdin who sent for him.
"P ardon me, Mr Dixon,” sa y s the salesm an, simulating relucrance
in disturbing such a busy personage. "I wonder if you could do something
for my customer. She thinks the price of this suite is too high. Madam,
this is our manager, Mr Dixon."
Mr Dixon d e a r s his throat impressively, lie is all of six feet, has
iron-grey hair and wears a Masonic pin on the lapel of his coat- Nobody
would susp ect from his appearance that he is only a T.O. man, a special
salesman ro whom difficult customers are turned over.
" Y e s ," says Mr Dixon, stroking bis well-shaven chin, *1 see.
You go on, Bennett. I’ll take care of madam myself. Pm not so busy
■u the moment anyhow.*
The salesman slips away, valet-like, though h e ’ll give Dixoo hell
if he muffs chat sale. 2
The practice described here of 1T .O .’in g ’ a customer to another
salesm an who takes the role of the manager is apparently
common in many retail establishm ents. Other illustrations
may be taken from a report on the language of furniture
salesm en:
'G iv e me the number of this article,’ is a question concerning the
price of the article. The forthcoming response is in code. The codc
is universal throughout the United States and is conveyed by simply
doubling the cost, the salesman knowing what percentage of profit to
add on to that. 3
Verlier is used as a command . . . . meaning 'lo s e yourself. 1 It is
employed when a salesman wants to let another salesm an know thar the
latter's presence is interfering with a sale. 4
In the semi-illegal and high-pressure fringes of our
commercial life, it is common to find that team-mates use an
explicitly learned vocabulary through which information crucial
to the show can be secretly conveyed. Presumably this kind
of code is not commonly found in thoroughly respectable
circles. 5 We find, however, that team-mates everywhere employ
^David Gelier, op. cit.t p. 284.
2 Conant, op. ctt., p. 174.
■^Charles Miller, ' Furniture Lingo,' American Speech, VI, 128.
Albid.%p. 126.
5 An exception, of course, is found in the boss-sccretary relation in
respectable establishm ents. Esquire Etiquette, for example, approves
the following; p. 24 .
Mf you share youc office with your secretary, you will do well to
arrange a signal which means you'd like her to get out while you talk to
a visitor in private. "Will you leave us alone for a while, MissSmich*”
em barrasses everybody; it's easier all around if you can convey the same
idea, by prearrangement, with something like, * Will you see if you can
settle that business with the merchandising department, Miss Smith?"'
115
an informally and often unconsciously learned vocabulary of
gestures and looks by which collusive staging cues can be
conveyed.
Sometimes these informal cues or 'high s ig n s ' will initiate
a phase in a performance. Thus, when ‘ in company,1 a husband
may convey to his -wife, by subtle shadings in his tone of
voice, or a change in his posture, that the two of them will
definitely now start making their farewells. The conjugal
team can then maintain an appearance of unity in action which
looks spontaneous but often presupposes a strict discipline.
Sometimes cues are available by which one performer can
warn another that the other is beginning to act out of line.
The kick under the table and the narrowed eyes have become
humorous examples. A piano accom panist suggests a way by
which deviating concert singers can be brought back into tune:
He (the accompanist) does this by getting more sharpness into his
tone, so that his tone will penetrate to the sing er’s ears, over or rather
through his voice. Perhaps one of the notes in the pianoforte harmony
is the very note that the singer should be singing, and so he makes
this note predominate. When this actual note is not writcen in the
pianoforte part, he must add it in the treble clef, where it will pipe
loud and clear foe the singer to hear. If the latter is singing a quarter
of a tone sharp, or a quarter of a tone flat, it will be an extraordinary
feat on his part to continue to sing out of tune, especially if the
accompanist plays the vocal line with him for the whole phrase. Once
having seen the danger signal the accompanist will continue to be on
the qui vive and will sound the singer's note from time to time. 1
The same writer goes on to say something that applies to
many kinds of performances:
A sensitive singer will need only the most dclicatc of cucs from
his partner. Indeed they can be so delicate chat even die singer himself
while profiting by them will not be consciously aware of Cnem. The
less sensitive the singer, the more pointed and therefore the more
obvious these cues will have to be. 2
Another example may be cited from Dale’s discussion of how
civil servants during a meeting can cue their minister that
he is on treacherous ground:
But in the course of conversation new and unforeseen points may well
arise. If a civil servant at the committee then se e s his Minister talcing
a line which he thinks wrong, he will nor say so flatly; he will either
scribble a note to the Minister or he will delicately put forward some
fact or suggestion a s a minor modification of h is Minister's view. An
experienced Minister will perceive the red light at once and gently
withdraw, or at least postpone discussion. It will be clear that the
mixture of Ministers and civil servants in a Committee requires on
occasion some exercise of tact and some quickness of perception on
both sides. 3
Very frequently informal staging cu es will warn team-mates
that the audience has suddenly come into their presence; 4
1 Moore, op. cit., pp. 56-57.
p. 57.
3 Dale, op. cit., p. 141.
A well-known formally-leamed cue of this kind is found in the visual signal
116
or that the coast is clear and thar relaxation of one’s front is
now p o ssib le; or that while it may seem all right to drop one’s
guard of discretion, there are in fact members of the audience
present, making it inadvisable to do so : 1 or that an innocent'ooking
member of the audience is really a spotter or shopper
or someone who is in other ways more or le ss than he seems.
It would be difficult for any team—a family, for example—
to manage the im pressions it fosters without such a set of
warning signals. A recent memoir concerning a mother and
daughter who lived in one room in London provides che
following example:
On the way p ast Gennaro's 1 became filled wich apprehension about
our lunch, wondering how my mother would take to Scotty (a manicurist*
colleague she was bringing home to lunch for the first time) and what
Scotty would think of my mother, and we were no sooner on the staircase
than 1 started to talk in a loud voice to warn her chat 1 was not alone.
Indeed, this was quite a signal between us, for when two people live
in a single room there is no telling what sort of untidiness can meet
the unexpected v isito rs eye. There w as nearly always a cookin§-pan
or a dirty plate where it should not be, or stockings or a petticoat
drying above the stove. My mother, warned by the raised voice of her
ebullient daughter, would rush round like a circus dancer hiding the
pan or the plate or the stockings, and then tum herself into a pillar of
frozen dignity, very calm, all ready for the visitor. If she had cleared
things up too quickly, and forgotten something very obvious, 1 would
se e her vigilant eye fixed upon it and I would be expected to do some*
thing about it without exciting the visitor's attention. 2
It may be noted, finally, that the more unconsciously these
cues are learned and employed, the easier it will be for the
members of a team to conceal even from themselves that they
do in fact function as a team. As previously suggested, even
to its own members, a team may be a secret society.
Closely associated with staging cues, we find that teams
work out ways of conveying extended verbal m essages to one
another in such a way as to protect a projected impression
chat might be disrupted were the audience to appreciate that
employed in broadcasting studios which lirerally or symbolically reads:
‘ You are on the air.' Another broad gesture is reported by Ponsonby,
np, cit , p. 102 :
'T h e Queen (Victoria) often went to sleep during these hot drives,
and in order that she should not be seen like this by a crowd in a village,
1 used to dig my spurs into the horse whenever 1 saw a large crowd ahead
and make the astonished animal jump about and make a noise. P rin cess
[Beatrice alw ays knew that this meant a crowd, and if the Queen didn't
wake with the noise 1 made, she woke her herself.'
A typical warning cue is illustrated by Katherine Archibald, op, cit.,
in her study of work in a shipyard :
* At times when work was especially slack I have myself stood guard
at the door of a tool shack, ready' to warn of the approach of a super*
intendent or a front-office boss, while for day after day nine or ten lesser
b osses and workmen played poker with passionate absorption.'
C r im in a ls commonly employ signals of this kind to warn their colleagues
that 'l e g i t ' ears are listening to them or legit eyes are watching them;
in criminal argot this warning is called 'giving the office.'
2 Mrs Robert llenrey, Madeleine Grown Up (New York: Dutton, 1953), PP*
'16-47.
117
information of this kind was being conveyed. Again we may
cite an illustration from the British civil service:
It is a very different matter when a civil servant is called on to
watch over a Dill in its passage through Parliament, or to go down to
either House for a debate. He cannot speak in his own person; he can
only supply the Minister with material and suggestions, and hope that
he will make good use of them. It need hardly be said that the Minister
is carefully *briefed* beforehand for any set speech, as on the second
or third reading o f an important Dill, or the introduction of the
Department's annual estim ates: for such an occasion the Minister is
supplied with full notes on every point likely to be raised, even with
anecdotes and Might r e lie f1 of a decorous official nature. He himself,
his Private Secretary, and the Permanent Secretary probably spend a
good deal of time and labour in selecting from these notes the most
effective points to emphasize, arranging them in the best order and
devising an impressive peroration. All this is easy both for the Minister
and his o fficials; it is done in quiet and at leisure. Dut the crux is
the reply at the end of a debate. There the Minister must mainly depend
on himself. It is true that the civil servants sitting with patient
endurance in the little gallery on the Speaker's right or ac the entrance
to the House of Lords, have noted down inaccuracies and distortions
of fact, false inferences, misunderstandings of the Government proposals
and sim ilar w eak nesses, in the case presented by Opposition speakers:
but ir is often difficult co get this ammunition up to the firing-line.
Sometimes the Minister’s Parliamentary Private Secretary wili rise from
h is seat just behind his chief, stroll carelessly along to the official
galiety and hold a whispered conversation with the civil serv an ts:
sometimes a note will be p assed along to the Minister: very rarely he
himself will come for a moment and ask a question. All these little
communications must go on under the eyes of the House, and no Minister
cares to seem like an actor who does not know his part ar.d requires
to be prompted. 1
B usiness etiquette, perhaps more concerned with strategic
secrets than with moral ones, offers the following suggestions:
. . . Guard your end of a phone conversation if an outsider is within
earshot. If you are taking a message from someone else, and you want
to be sure you’ve got it straight, don't repeat the m essage in the usual
fashion; instead, ask the caller to repeat it, so your clarion tones
won't announce a possibly private m essage to all bystanders.
. . . Cover your papers before an outside caller arrives, or make a
habit of keeping them in folders or under a covering blank sheer.
. . . If you must speak to someone else in your organization when
lie is with an outsider, or with anyone who is not concerned with your
m essage, do it in such a way chat che chird person doesn ’t pick up any
information. You might use the interoffice telephone rather than the
intercom, say, or write your m essage on i note you can hand over
instead of speaking your piece in public. 2
A visitor who is expected should be announced immediately. If you
are closeted with another person your secretary interrupts you to say
something like, q Your three o’clock appointment is here. I thought
you’d like to know,” (She doesn 't mention the visitor’s name in the
hearing of an outsider. If you arc not likely to remember who your
‘ three o’clock appointm ent’ is, she writes the name on a slip of papet
and hands it to you, or u ses your private phone instead of the loudspeaker
system.) 3
Staging cues have been suggested as one main type of
team collusion; another type involves communications which
function chiefly to confirm for the performer the fact that he
iD ale, op. cit., pp. M8-149.
2 Esquire Etiquette, op. cif., p. 7. E llipsis dots the authors’.
* Esquire Etiquette, op. cit., pp. 22-23.
118
does not really hold with the working consensus, thac the
show he puts on is only a show, thereby providing himself
with at least a private defence against the claim s made by the
audience. We may label this activity 'd erisiv e collusion;' it
typically involves a secret derogation of the audience although
sometimes conceptions of the audience may be conveyed that
are too complimentary to fit within the working consensus.
We have here a furtive public counterpart of what was described
in the seccion called 'Treatm ent of the Absent.’
Derisive collusion occurs most frequently, perhaps, between
a performer and hi nisei f. School children provide examples of
this when they cross their fingers while telling a lie or stick
out their tongues when the teacher momentarily moves to a
position where she cannot see the tribute. So, too, employees
will often grimace at their boss, or gesticulate a silent curse,
performing these a c ts of contempt or insubordination at an
angle such that those to whom these acts are directed cannot
see them. Perhaps the most timid form of this kind of collusion
is found in the practice of 'd o o d lin g 1 or of ‘ going aw ay’ to
imaginary pleasant places, while still maintaining some show
of performing the part of listener.
Derisive collusion also occurs between members of a
team when they are presenting a performance. Thus, while a
secret code of verbal insults may perhaps be employed only
on the lunatic fringe of our commercial life, there i s no
commercial establishment so reputable that its clerks do not
cast each other knowing looks when in the presence of an
undesirable client or a desirable client who conducts himself
in an undesirable way. Similarly, in our society it is very
difficult for a husband and wife, or two close friends, to spend
an evening in convivial interaction with a third person without
at some time looking at each other in such a way a s to
contradict secretly the attitude they are officially maintaining
toward the third person.
A more damaging form of this kind of aggression against
the audience is found in situations where one member of a
team performs his part for the special and secret amusement
of his team-mates; for example, he may throw himself into
his part with an affective enthusiasm that is at once exaggerated
and precise, but so close to what the audience expects that
they do not quite realize, or are not sure, that fun is being
made of them. 1 A somewhat similar form of collusion occurs
’ Suggested by Howard S. Beckcr in a personal communication. Mr Becker
srates rliat jazz musicians obliged to play ’ corny’ music will sometimes
play it a little more corny than necessary, the slight exaggeration serving
ns a means by which the musicians can convey to each other their contempt
for the audience.
119
when one team member attem tps to tease another while both
are engaged in a performance. T he immediate object here
will be to make one’s team-mate almost burst out laughing,
or almost trip, or almost lose his poise in other ways. For
example, in the island tourist hotel studied by the writer, the
cook would sometimes stand at the kitchen entrance to the
front regions of the hotel and solemnly answer with dignity
and in standard English the questions put to him by hotel
guests, while from within the kitchen the maids, straight-faced,
would secretly but persistently goose him. By mocking the
the audience or teasing a team-mate, the performer can show
not only that he is not bound by the official interaction but
also that he has this interaction so much under control that
he can toy wirh it at will.
A final form of derisive by-play may be mentioned. Often
when an individual is interacting with a second individual
who is offensive in some way, he will try to catch the eye
of a third individual—one who is defined as an outsider
to the interaction—and in this way confirm that he is not to
be held responsible for the character or behaviour of the second
individual. It may be noted in conclusion that all of these
forms of derisive collusion tend to arise almost involuntarily,
by cues that are conveyed before they can be checked.
Reoligning Actions
It has been suggested that when individuals come together
for the purpose of interaction, each adheres to the part that
has been ca st for him within his team’s routine, and each
joins with his team-mates in maintaining the appropriate mixture
of formality and informality, of distance and intimacy, toward
the members of the other team. This does not mean that teammates
will openly treat one another in the same way as they
openly treat the audience, but it does usually mean that teammates
will treat one another differently from the way that would
be most 'n a tu r a l1 for them. Collusive communication h as been
suggested as one way in which team-mates can free them selves
a little from the restrictive requirements of interaction between
team s; it is a kind of deviation from type which the audience
is meant to remain unaware of, and it tends, therefore, to leave
the status quo intact. However, performers rarely seem content
with safe channels for expressing discontent with the working
consensus. They often attempt to speak out of character in
a way that will be heard by the audience but will not openly
threaten either the integrity of the two teams or the social
120
distance between them. T hese temporary unofficial, or
controlled realignments, often aggressive in character, provide
an interesting area for study.
When two teams establish an official working consensus
as a guarantee for safe social interaction, we may usually
detect an unofficial line of communication which each team
directs at the other. This unofficial communication may be
carried on by innuendo, mimicked accents, well-placed jokes,
significant pauses, veiled hints, purposeful kidding, expressive
overtones, and many other sign practices. Rules regarding
this laxity are quite strict. The communicator has the right to
deny that he 'm eant anything1 by his action, should his
recipients accuse him to his face of having conveyed something
unacceptable, and the recipients have the right to act as if
nothing, or only something innocuous, has been conveyed.
In many kinds of social interaction, unofficial communication
provides a way in which one team can extend a definite but noncompromising
invitation to the other, requesting that social
distance and formality be increased or decreased, or that both
teams shift the interaction to one involving the performance
of a new set of roles. This is sometimes known as 'putting
out fe e le rs ’ and involves guarded disclosures and hinted
demands. By means of statem ents that are carefully ambiguous
or that have a secret meaning to the initiate, a performer is
able to discover, without dropping his defensive stand, whether
or not it is safe to dispense with the current definition of the
situation. For example, since it is not necessary to retain
social distance or be on guard before those who are one’s
colleagues in occupation, ideology, ethnicity, class, etc., it
is common for colleagues to develop secret signs which seem
innocuous to non-colleagues while at the sam e time they convey
to the initiate that he is among his own and can relax the
pose he maintains toward the public. Thus the murderous
Thugs of nineteenth-century India, who hid their annual
depredations behind a nine-month show of civic-minded actions,
p o ssessed a code for recognizing one another. As one writer
s u g g e s ts :
When Thugs meet, though strangers, there is something in their
manner which soon discovers itself to each other, and to assure the
surmise thus excited, one exclaims 'A le e K han!' which, on being
repeated by the other party, a recognition of each other’s habit takes
place . . . *
Similarly, men of the British working c la ss can be found who
still ask a stranger 'how far E a s t’ is he; fellow Freemasons
‘ Col. [.L .S leem an, Tkugs or a Million Murders (London: Sampson Low,
n. d.), p. 79.
121
know how to answer this password and know that after they
do answ er it those present can relax into intolerance for
C atholics and the effete c la sse s. In Anglo-American society
the surname and the appearance of persons to whom one is
introduced serve a similar function, telling one which of the
segments of the population it will be impolitic to cast
aspersions against.
The guarded disclosure by which two members of an intimate
society make them selves known to each other is perhaps the
least subtle version of disclosive communication. In everyday
life, where individuals have no secret society to disclose
their membership in, a more delicate process is involved.
When individuals are unfamiliar with each other’s opinions
and statu ses, a feeling-out process occurs whereby one
individual admits his views or sta tu se s to another a little at
a time. After dropping his guard just a little he waits for the
other to show reason why it is safe for him to do this, and
after this reassurance he can safely drop his guard a little
bit more. By phrasing each step in the admission in an
ambiguous way, the individual is in a position to halt the
procedure of dropping his front at the point where he gets no
confirmation from the other, and at this point he can act as if
h is la st disclosure were not an overture at all. Thus when
two persons in conversation are attempting to discover how
careful they are going to have to be about stating their true
political opinions, one of them can halt his gradual disclosure
of how far left or how far right he is just a t the point where
the other has come to the furthest extreme of his actual beliefs.
In such cases, the person with the more extreme views will
tactfully act as if his views are no more extreme than the
other’s.
T his process of gradual guarded disclosure is also
illustrated by some of the mythology and a few of the facts
associated with sexual life in our society. The sexual relation
is defined as one of intimacy with initiative superordination
for the male. In fact, courting practices involve a concerted
aggression against the alignment between the sexes on the
part of the male, as he attempts to manoeuvre someone for
whom he must at first show respect into a position of
subordinate intimacy. However, an even more aggressive action
against the alignment between the sexes is found in situations
where the working consensus is defined in terms of superordination
and distance on the part of a performer who happens
to be a woman and subordination on the part of a performer
who happens to be a man. The possibility arises that the
122
male performer will redefine the sicuation to emphasize his
sexual superordination as opposed to his socio-economic
subordination. 1 In our proletarian literature, for example,
it is the poor man who introduces th is redefinition in regard
to a rich woman; Lady Chatterley's J^over, as has often been
remarked, is a clear-cut example. And when we study service
occupations, especially lowly ones, inevitably we find that
practitioners have anecdotes to tell about the time they or
one of their colleagues redefined the service relacion inco
a sexual one (or had it redefined for them). T ales of such
aggressive redefinitions are a significant part of the mythology
not only of particular occupations but also of the male
subculture generally.
Temporary realignments through which iirection of the
interaction may be seized in an unofficial way by a subordinate,
or unofficially extended by a superordinate, attain some kind
of stability and insticutionalization in what is sometimes
called ' double-talk.’ 2 By this communication technique two
individuals may convey information to one another in a manner
or on a matter chat is inconsistent with their official relationship.
Double-talk involves the kind of innuendo that can
be conveyed by both sides and carried on for a sustained period
of time. It is a kind of collusive communication differenc
from other types of collusion in thac the characters against
whom the collusion is sustained are projecced by the very
persons who enter into the collusion. Typically double-talk
occurs during interaction between a subordinate and a superordinate
concerning matters which are officially outside the
the competence and jurisdiction of the subordinate buc which
actually depend on him. By employing double-talk the subordinate
can initiate lines of action without giving open
recognition to the expressive implication of such initiation
and without putting into jeopardy the statu s difference between
himself and his superordinate. Barracks and jails apparently
abound in double-talk. It is also commonly found in situations
’ P erhaps because of respect for the Freudian ethic, some sociologists
seem to a c t a s if it would be io bad taste, impious, or self-revelatory to
define sexual intercourse a s part of the ceremonial system, a reciprocal
ritual performed to confirm symbolically an exclusive social relationship.
T h is chapter draws heavily on Kenneth Burke, who clearly takes the
sociological view in defining courtship as a principle of rhetoric through
which social estrangements are transcended. See Burke, A Grammar
o f Motives, p. 208 ff. and pp. 267-268.
2In everyday speech the term 'd o u b le-talk ' is also used in two other senses :
it i s used to refer to sentences in which sounds have been injected which
seem a s if they mi^ht be meaningful but really are not; it is used to refer
to protectively ambiguous answers to questions for which the asker desired
a c le a r c u t reply.
123
where the subordinate has had long experience with the job
whereas the superordinate has not, as in the split which occurs
in government offices between a 'perm anent’ deputy minister
and a politically appointed minister, and in those c a se s where
the subordinate speaks the language of a group of employees
but his superordinate does not. We may also find double-talk
in situations where two persons engage in illicit agreements
with ‘each other, for by this technique communication may
occur and yet neither participant need place himself in the
hands of the other. A similar form of collusion is sometimes
found between two team s which must maintain the impression
of being relatively hostile or relatively distant toward each
other and yet find it mutually profitable to come to an agreement
on certain matters, providing this does not em barrass the
oppositional stand they are obliged to be ready to maintain
toward each other. 1 In other words, deals can be made without
creating the mutual-solidarity relationship which dealing
usually lead s to. More important, perhaps, double-talk regularly
occurs in intimate domestic and work situations, as a safe
means of making and refusing requests and commands that
could not be openly made or openly refused without altering
the relationship.
I have considered some common realigning actions—movements
around, or over, or away from the line between the team s;
processes such a s "nofficial grumbling, guarded disclosures,
and double-talk were given as instances. 1 would like to
add a few more types to the picture.
When the working consensus established between two teams
is one involving avowed opposition, we find that the division
of labour within each team may ultimately lead to momentary
realignments of the kind that make us appreciate that not only
armies have the problem of fraternization. A specialist on
one team may find that he has a great deal in common with
his opposite number on the other team and that together they
talk a language which tends to align them together on a single
team in opposition to all the remaining participants. Thus,
during labour-management negotiations, opposing lawyers
may find them selves exchanging collusive looks when a layman
on either team makes a patent legal gaffe. When the sp ecialists
are not permanently part of a particular team but rather hire
them selves out for the duration of negotiations, they are likely
to be more loyal in some se n se to their catling and their
l See Dale, op. cit., pp. 182-183, foe an illustration of tacit compromises
between two teams officially opposed to each other. See also Melville
Dalton, 'U nofficial Uaion-Management Relations,’ American Sociological
R eview , XV, pp. 611-619.
124
colleagues chan to rhe team they happen at the time to
be serving. If, then, the impression of opposition between
che team s is to be maintained, the cross-cutting loyalties of
sp e cia lists will have to be suppressed or expressed surreptitiously.
Thus American lawyers, in sensing that their clients
want them to be hostile to the opposing lawyer, may wait
until a backstage rec ess before having a friendly collegial
chat about the ca se in progress. In discu ssin g the role that
civil servants play in parliamentary debates, Dale makes a
similar suggestion:
A sec debate on one subject . . . . as a rule takes only one day.
If a Department is so unlucky a s to have a long and contentious BUI in
Committee of the whole House, the Minister and the civil servants in
charge of it must be there from 4 p.m. till 11 p.m. (sometimes much later
if the 1! o' clock rule is suspended), perhaps day after day from Monday
till Thursday every w e e k . . . . However, the civil servants get one
compensation for their sufferings. It is at this time that they are most
likely to renew and extend their acquaintances in the House. The sense
of pressure is less both amon£ Members and among officials than during
a set debate of one day : it is legitimate to escap e ftom the debating
chamber to the smoking*room ot the terrace and engage in cheerful
conversation while a notorious bote is moving an amendment which
everyone knows to be impossible. A certain camaraderie arises among
all engaged night after night upon a Bill, Government Opposition, and
civil servants alike. 1
Interestingly enough, in some c a se s even backstage fraternization
may be considered too much of a threat to the show.
Thus baseball players whose teams will represent opposing
sid e s of fans are required by league ruling to refrain from
convivial conversation with one another just before the game
starts.
T his is a readily understandable rule. It would not be seemly to
se e players chinning as if they were at an afternoon tea, and then hope
to support the point chac they go after each other hell-bent for leather,
which they do, as soon as the game begins. They have to act like
opponents all the time. 2
In all of these ca se s involving fraternization between opposing
specia lists, the point is not that the secrets of the teams will
be disclosed or their interests made to suffer (although this
may occur and may appear to occur) but rather that the impression
of opposition that is fostered between the teams may
be discredited. The contribution of the specialist must appear
to be a spontaneous response to the facts of the case, independently
placing him in opposition to the other team ; when
he fraternizes with his opposite number the technical value
of his contribution may not suffer, but, dramaturgically speaking,
it is shown up for what it is —the purchased performance of
a routine task.
I do not mean to imply by this discussion that fraternization
1 UUe, op. cit., p. 150.
-Pinelli, op cif., p. 169
125
occurs only between sp e cia lists temporarily taking sides
against each other. Whenever loyalties cross-cut, a set of
individuals may loudly form one pair of team s while quietly
forming another.
Often, when two team s enter social interaction, we can
identify one as having the lower general prestige and the other
team the higher. Ordinarily, when we think of realigning
actions in such ca se s, we think of efforts on the part of the
lower team to alter the basis of interaction in a direction more
favourable to them or to decrease the social distance and
formality between them selves and the higher team. Interestingly
enough, there are occasions when it serves the wider goals
of the higher team to lower barriers and admit the lower team
to greater intimacy and equality with it. Granting the consequences
of extending backstage familiarity to one’s lessers,
it may be in one’s long-range interest to do so momentarily.
Thus, in order to prevent a strike, Mr Barnard tells us he
deliberately swore in the presence of a committee representing
unemployed workers and also tells us that he is aware of the
significance of th is :
In my judgment, confirmed by others whose opinion I respect,
it is as a general rule exceedingly bad practice fot one In a superior
position to sw ear at or in the presence of those of subordinate or inferior
status» even though the latter have no objection to oaths and even
though they know the superior is accustomed to cursing. I have known
very few men who could do it without adyerse reactions on rhelr influence.
I suppose the reason is that whatever lowers the dignity of a superior
position makes it more difficult to accept difference of position. Also,
where a single organization is involved in which the superior position
is symbolic of the whole organization, the prestige of the latter is
thought to be injured. In the present case, an exception, the oath was
deliberate and accompanied by hard pounding of the table. 1
A sim ilar situation is found in those mental hospitals
where milieu therapy is practised. By bringing the nurse and
even attendants into what are usually sacrosanct staff conferences,
these non-medical staff persons can feel that the
d istan ce between them selves and the doctors is decreasing
and may show more read in ess to take the doctors’ point of
view toward the patients. By sacrificing the ex clusiveness
of those at the top, it is felt that the morale of those at the
bottom can be increased. A staid report of this process is
given us by Maxwell Jones in his report on English experience
with milieu therapy:
1 Chester I. Barnard, Organization and Management (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University P re ss , 1949), n. pp. 73-74. T his kind of conduct must
be clearly distinguished from the rough language and behaviour employed
by a superordioate who sta y s within the team made up of his employees
and 'k i d s ' them into work.
126
In che unit we have attempted co develop the role of the doctor to meer
our limited treatment goat and have tried to avoid pteience. T h is has
meant a considerable break from hospital tradition. Vic do not dress
to conform co the usual concept of the professional man. Vt'e have
avoided the white coat, prominent stethoscope, and aggressive percussion
hammer a s excensions of our body image. 1
Actually, when we study the interaction between two
teams in everyday situations we find that often the superordinate
team will be expected to unbend just a little. For one
thing, such relaxation of front provides a basis for barter;
the superordinate receives a service or good of some kind,
while the subordinate receives an indulgent grant of intimacy.
Thus, the reserve which upper-class people in Britain maintain
during interaction with tradesmen and petty officials has been
known to give way momentarily when a particular favour must
be asked of these subordinates. Also, such relaxation of
d istance provides one means by which a feeling of spontaneity
and involvemenc can be generated in the interaction. In any
case, interaction between two teams often involves the taking
of very small liberties, if only a s a means of testing the ground
to see if unexpected advantage might not be taken of the
opposing side.
When a performer refuses to keep his place, whether it
is of higher or lower rank than the audience, we may expect
that the director, if there is one, and the audience may well
become ill-disposed toward him. In many cases, the rank
and file are also likely to object to him. As previously
suggested in reference to ratebusters, any extra concession
to the audience on the part of one member of the team is a
threat to the stand the others have taken and a threat to the
security they obtain from knowing and controlling the stand
they will have to take. Thus, when one teacher in a school
is deeply sympathetic to her charges, or enters into their play
during recess, or is willing to come into close contact with
the low -status ones among them, the other teachers will find
that the impression they are trying to maintain of what
constitutes appropriate work is threatened. 1 In fact, when
particular performers cross the line that separates the teams,
when someone becomes too intimate, or too indulgent, or too
antagonistic, we may expect a circuit of reverberations to be
set up which affects the subordinate team, the superordinate
team, and the particular transgressors. ___________
1 Maxwell Jones, The Therapeutic Community (New York: Basic Books,
1953), p. 40.
2 Personal communication ftom Helen Biaw, schoolteacher.
127
A hint of such reverberations may be cited from a recent
study of merchant seamen, in which the author suggests that
when officers quarrel in matters regarding ship duty, the seamen
will avail them selves of the breach by offering their commiserations
to the officer chey feel has been wronged:
In doing th is (playing up to one of the disputants) the crewmen
expected the officer to relax in his superior attitude and to allow the
men a certain equality while d isc u ssin g the situation. T h is soon led
to their expecting certain privileges—sucn a s standing in the wheel-house
instead of on the wings of the bridge. They took advantage o f the
m ates' dispute to ease their subordinate statu s. 1
Recenc trends in psychiatric treatment provide us with other
exam ples; I would like to mention some of these.
One instance may be taken from the Maxwell Jo n e s’ report,
although his study purports to be an argumenc for easing sta tu s
differences between staff levels and between patients and staff:
The integrity of the n u rses’ group can be upset by the indiscretion
of any one member: a nutse who allow s her sexual needs to be met in
an overt way by the patient alters the patien t’s attitude towards the
whole nursing group and makes the nurse's therapeutic role a less
effective one. 2
Another illustration is found in Bettelheim ’s comments on his
experience in constructing a therapeutic milieu at the Sonia
Shankman Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago:
Within the total setting of the therapeutic milieu, personal security,
adequate instinctual gratification and group support all sensitize the
child to incer-personal relations. It would, of course, defeat the putposes
of milieu therapy if the children were not also safeguarded from the
kind of disillusionm ent they have already experienced in their original
settings. Staff coherency is therefore an important source of personal
security to the children a s the staff members remain impervious to the
children’s attempts to play off one staff member against another.
Originally, many children win the affection of one parent only at the
co st of affectionate claims on the other. A child’s means of controlling
the family sicuarion by pitting one parent against the other is often
developed on this basis, but gives him no more than a relative security.
Children who have used this technique with particular su c c e ss are
especially handicapped in their ability to form unambivalent relationships
later on. In any case, a s the children recreate oedipal situations in the
school they also form positive, negative or ambivalent attachm ents to
various staff members. It is essential that th ese relationships between
children and individual staff members do not affect the relationships of
staff members to each other. Without coherence in this area of the
total milieu such attachm ents might deteriorate into neurotic relationships
and destroy the basis of identification and sustained affectionate
attachm ents. 3
A final illustration may be taken from a group therapy project,
in which suggestions are sketched in for handling recurrent
interaction difficulties caused by troublesome patien ts:
Attempts are made to establish a special relationship with the
doctor. P atien ts often attempt to cultivate the illusion of a secret
understanding with the doctor by, for example, trying to catch h is eye
■Beattie, op. cil., pp. 25-26.
2Maxwell Jones, op. ciU, p. 38.
3 Bruno Betrelheim and Emmy Sylvester, ‘ Milieu T herapy,’ Psychoanalytic
Review, XXXVI, 65.
128
if one patient brings up something that sounds 'c ra z y .' If they succeed
in getting a response from the doctor which they can interpret as
indicating a special bond, it can be very disrupting to the group. Since
this type of dangerous by-play is characteristically non-verbal, the
doctor must especially control his own non-verbal activity. 1
Perhaps these citations tell us more about the parriy hidden
social sentiment? of the writers than about the general
processes that can occur when someone steps out of line, but
recently, in the work of Stanton and Schwartz, we have been
given a fairly detailed report of the circuit of consequences
which arises when the line between two teams is crossed. 2
It was suggested that at times of crisis lines may
momentarily break and members of opposing teams may momentarily
forget their appropriate pla ces with respect to one another.
It was also suggested that certain purposes can sometimes be
served, apparently, when barriers between teams are lowered,
and . that to achieve these purposes superordinate teams may
temporarily join with the lower ranks. It must be added, as a
kind of limiting case, that interacting teams sometimes seem
to be prepared to step out of the dramatic framework for their
actions and give them selves up for extended periods of time
to a promiscuous orgy of clinical, religious, or ethical analysis.
We can find a lurid version of this process in evangelical
social movements which employ the open confession. A sinner,
sometimes admittedly not of very high status, stands up and
tells to those who are present things he would ordinarily attempt
to conceal or rationalize away; he sacrifices his secrets and
his self-protective distance from others, and this sacrifice
tends to induce a backstage solidarity among all present.
Group therapy affords a similar mechanism for the building up
of team spirit and backstage solidarity. A psychic sinnet
1 Florence B. Powdermaker and others, 'Prelim inary Report for the National
Research Council: Group Thetapy Research P ro je c t,’ p. 26. (This research
has since been reported by Powdermaker and' Jerome D. Frank, Group
Psychotherapy (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University P ress, 1953).)
Defrayal of one's team by catching the eye of a member of the other
team is, of course, a common occurence. It may fee noted that in everyday
life refusal to enter into momentary collusive communication of this kind
when one has been invired to do so is itself a minor affront ro the inviter.
One may find oneseLf in a dilemma as to whether to betray the object of
the requested collusion or to affront the person requesting the collusion.
An example is provided by Ivy Compton-Burnett, A Family and a Fortune
(London: Eyre & Sp oeti swoode, 1948), p. 13*
" B u t 1 was not snoring," said Blanche, in the easier tone of losing
grasp of a situation. * 1 should have known it myself. It would not be
possible to be awake and m ake a noise and not hear it. 71
’ Ju stin e gave an arch look at anyone who would receive it. Edgar
did so a s a duty and rapidly withdrew h is eyes a s another. 1
2 Alfred H. Stanton and Morris S. Schwartz, 'T h e Management of a Type of
Institutional Participation in Mental Illn e ss,1 Psychiatry, XII, 13-26.
in this paper the writers describe nurse-sponsorship of particular patients
in terms of its effects upon other patients, the staff, and the transgressors.
129
stands up and talks about himself and invites others to talk
about him in a way that would be im possible in ordinary interaction.
Ingroup solidarity tends to result, and this 's o c ia l
support,’ a s it is called, presumably h as therapeutic value.
(By everyday standards, the only thing a patient lo se s in this
way is his self-respect.) Perhaps an echo of this is also to
be found in the nurse-doctor meetings previously mentioned.
It may be that these shifts from apartness to intimacy
occur at times of chronic strain. Or perhaps we can view them
as part of an anti-dramaturgical social movement, a cult of
confession. Perhaps such lowering of barriers represents
a natural phase in the social change which transforms one
team into another: presumably opposing teams trade secrets
so that they can start at the beginning to collect a new set
of skeletons for a newly shared closet. In any case, we find
that occasions arise when opposing teams, be they industrial,
marital, national, etc., seem ready not only to tell their secrets
to the same sp ecialist but also to perform th is disclosure in
the enemy’s presence. 1
In conclusion I would like to suggest that one of the most
fruitful places to study realigning actions, especially temporary
betrayals, may not be in hierarchically organized establishm ents
but during informal convivial interaction among relative equals.
In fact, the sanctioned occurrence of these aggressions seem s
to be one of the defining characteristics of our convivial life.
It is often expected on such occasions that two persons will
engage each other in a sparring conversation for the benefit
of listen ers and that each will attempt, in an unserious way,
to discredit the position taken by the other. Flirting may
occur in which males will try to destroy the females’ pose
of virginal unapproachability, while females may attempt to
force from males a commitment of concern without at the same
time weakening their own defensive position. (Where those
who flirt are at the same time members of different connubial
teams, relatively unserious betrayals and sell-outs may also
occur.) In conversational circles of five or six, basic alignments
as between one conjugal pair and another, or between
hosts and guests, or between men and women, may be lightheartedly
set aside, and the participants will stand ready to
shift and reshift team alignments with little provocation,
jokingly joining their previous audience against their previous
'An example may be seen in the claimed role of the Tavistock group as
th erap ists for ’ working through' the antagonism of labour and management
in industrial establishm ents. See the consultation records reported in
E liot Jaques, The Changing Culture of a Factory (London: Tavistock Ltd.,
1951).
130
team-mates by means of open betrayal of them or by mock
collusive communication against them. It may also be defined
a s fitting if someone present of high sta tu s be made drunk and
made to drop his front and become intimately approachable by
h is somewhaC-lessers. T he same aggressive tone is often
achieved in a le s s sophisticated way by playing games or
jokes in which the person who i s the butt will be led
unseriously, into taking a position that is ludicrously untenable.’
QJOOOUJXUÜ
In this chapter I have considered four types of communication
out of character: treatment of the ab sen t; staging talk;
team collusion; and realigning actions. Each of th e se four
types o f conduct directs attention to the sam e point: the
performance given by a team is not a spontaneous, immediate
response to the situation, absorbing all of the team’s energies
and constituting their sole social reality; the performance is
something the team members can stand back from, back far
enough to imagine or play out simultaneously other kinds of
performances attesting to other realities. Whether th e performers
feel their official offering is the ‘ re a lis t’ reality or not,
they will give surreptitious expression to multiple versions
of reality, each tending to be incompatible with the others.
131
C H A P T E R VI
THE ARTS OF IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT
In this chapter I would like to bring together what has
been said or implied about the attributes that are required of
a performer for the work of successfully staging a character,
by referring briefly to some of the techniques of impression
management in which these attributes are expressed. As an
introduction to this attempt, it may be well to suggest, in
some c a s e s for the second time, some of the principal types
of performance disruptions, for it is these disruptions which
the techniques of impression management function to avoid.
In the beginning of this report, in considering the general
ch aracteristics of performances, it was suggested that the
performer must act with expressive responsibility, since many
minor, inadvertent a c ts happen to be well designed to convey
im pressions inappropriate at the time. T hese events were
called 'unm eant g estu res.’ Ponsonby gives an illustration
of how a director’s attempt to avoid an unmeant gesture led
to the occurrence of another.
One of the Attachés from the Legation was to c a n y the cushion on
which the insignia were placed, and in otder to prevent their falling off
I stuck the pin at the back of the Star through the velvet cushion. The
Attaché', howevet, was not content with this, but sccured the end of
th e pin by the catch to make doubly sure. The result was that when
Prince Alexander, having made a suitable spcech, tried to get hold of
the Star, he found it firmly fixed to the cushion and spent some rime
in getting it loose. T his rather .spoilt the most impressive moment of
the ccrcmony. 1
It should be added that the individual held responsible for
contributing an unmeant gesture may chiefly discredit his
own performance by this, a team-mate’s performance, or the
performance being staged by his audience.
When an outsider accidentally enters a region in which a
performance is being given, or when a member of the audience
inadvertently enters the backstage, the intruder is likely to
catch those present flagrante delicto. Through no one’s
intention, the persons present in the region may find that
they have patently been witnessed in activity that is quite
incompatible with the impression that they are, for wider social
reasons, in a position to maintain to the intruder. We deal
here with what are sometim es called 'inopportune intrusions.’
'P onsonby, op. eft., p. 351.
132
The past rife and current round of activity of a given
performer typically contain at le a st a few facts which, if
introduced during the performance, would discredit or at le ast
weaken the claim s about self that the performer w as attempting
io project as part of the definition of the situation. T h ese
facts may involve well-kept dark secrets or negatively-valued
ch aracteristics that everyone can see but no one refers to.
When such facts are introduced, em barrassment is the usual
result. T hese facts can, of course, be brought to one’s attention
by unmeant g estures or inopporcune intrusions. However, they
are more frequently introduced by intentional verbal statem ents
c r non-verbal a c ts whose full significance is not appreciated
by :he individual who contributes them co the interaction.
Following common usage, such disruptions of projections may
be called 'fa u x p a s .’ Where a performer unthinkingly makes
ari incentional contribution which destroys his own team’s
inv-'.£e we may speak of ‘ g a ffe s ’ or : boners.’ Where a performer
jecps-fdizes the image of self projected by the other team, we
may speak of 'b r i c k s ’ or of the performer having 'p u t his
foot in it.' :
Unmeant gestures, inopporcune intrusions, and faux Das
are sources of em barrassm ent and dissonance which are
typically unintended by the- person who is responsible for
making them and which woa.lo be avoided were the individual
tc ‘<now in advance the coascquences of his activity. However
the:? are situations, often called 's c e n e s , ' in which an
individual a c ts in such a way as to destroy or seriously threaten
the polite appearance of consensus, and while he may not act
si.~:.;ly in order to create suci? dissonance, he a c ts wich the
knowledge that this kind cf dissonance is likely to result.
Tne com mon-sense phrase, 'crea tin g a sc e n e ,’ is apt because,
in iiifect, a new scen e is created by such disruptions. The
previous and expected interplay between the teams is suddenly
forced aside and a new drama forcibly tak es its place.
Sio.iificantly, this new scene often involves a sudden reshuffling
1 Ivriquette manuals provide cla ssic warnings again st such indiscretions.
*'or example, 2"he L aw s o f E tiquette (P hiladelphia: Carey, L ee &
olanchard, 1336), p*. 1 0 1 :
‘ K there is any one in the company whom you do not know, be careful
how you Jet off any epigrams or p leasan t little sarcasm s. You might be
very witty upon halters to a man whose father had been hanged. The
first requisite for successfu l conversation is to know your company w ell.’
Another example occurs in The Canons o f Good Breeding, op. c it,t p. 80 : .
‘ In meeting a friend whom you have not seen for some time, and of the
state and history of whose family you have not been recently or particularly
informed, you should avoid making enquiries or allusions in resp ect to
particular individuals of his familyt until you have p o ss e s se d yourself of
knowledge respecting them. Some may be d ead ; others may have misbehaved,
separated them selves, or fallen under some distressing calam ity.’
133
and reapportioning of th e previous team members into two
new teams.
Some s c e n e s occur when team -m ates can no longer
countenance each other’s inept performance and blurt out
immediate public criticism of the very individuals with whom
they ought to be in dramaturgical co-operation. Such misconduct
i s often devastating to the performance which the disputants
ought to be p resen tin g ; one effect of the quarrel is to provide
the audience with a backstage view, and another is to leave
them with the feeling that something is surely su sp icio u s
about a performance when those who know it best do not agree.
Another type of scen e occurs when the audience d ecid es it
can no longer play the game of polite interaction, or that it
no longer w ants to do so, and so confronts the performers
with facts or expressive a c ts which each team knows will be
unacceptable. T h is is what happens when an individual screw s
up h is social courage and d ecid es to 'h a v e it o u t’ with another
or 're a lly tell him off.’ Criminal trials have in stitutionalized
this kind of open discord, as have the la s t chapters of murder
m ysteries, where an individual who has theretofore maintained
a convincing pose of innocence is confronted in the presence
of others with undeniable expressive evidence that his pose
is only a pose. Another kind of sc en e occurs when the interaction
between two persons becomes so loud, heated, or
otherw ise attention-getting, that nearby persons engaged in
their own conversational interaction are forced to become
w itn esses or even to take sid es and enter the fray. A final
type of scene may be suggested. When a person acting as a
one-man team commits himself in a serious way to a claim or
request and leav es himself no way out should this be denied
by the audience, he usually makes sure that his claim or request
is the kind that i s likely to be approved and granted by the
audience. If h is motivation is strong enough, however, an
individual may find him self making a claim or an assum ption
which he knows the audience may well reject. He knowingly
low ers his d efen ces in their presence, throwing himself, as
we say, on their mercy. By such an act the individual m akes
a plea to the audience to treat them selves as part of his team
or to allow him to treat him self as part k>( their team. T his
sort of thing is em barrassing e'nough, but when the unguarded
request is refused to the individual’s face, he suffers what we
can call humiliation.
We have considered some major forms of performance
disruption—unmeant gestures, inopportune intrusions, faux
pas, and scen es. T h ese disruptions, in everyday term s, are
134
often called 'in c id e n ts .’ When an incident occurs, the reality
sponsored by the performers is threatened. The persons present
are likely to react by becoming flustered, ill at ease, embarrassed,
nervous, and the like. Quite literally, the
participants may find them selves out of countenance. When
these flusterings or symptoms of em barrassm ent become perceived,
the reality that is supported by the performance is
likely to be further jeopardized and weakened, for th ese signs
of nervousness in most c a s e s are an asp ec t of the individual
who p resen ts a character and not an aspect of the character
he projects, thus forcing upon the audience an image of the
man behind the mask.
In order to prevent the occurrence of incidents and the
embarrassment consequent upon them, it will be necessary
for all the particip an ts in the interaction, a s well a s those
who do not participate, to p o s s e s s certain attributes and to
express th ese attributes in practices employed for saving the
show. T h e se attributes and p rac tices will be reviewed under
three headings: the defensive m easures used by performers
to save their own show; the protective m easures used by
audience and outsiders to a s s is t the performers in saving the
performers’ show ; and, finally, the m easures the performers
m ust take ill order to make it p o ssib le for the audience and
outsiders to employ protective m easures on the performers’
behalf.
Defensive Attributes and Practices
1. DRAMATURGICAL LOYALTY. It is apparent that if
a team is to sustain the line it h as taken, the team-mates
must act as if they have accepted certain moral obligations.
They must not voluntarily betray the se crets of the team,
whether from self-interest or principle. They must not exploit
their presence in the front region in order to stage their own
show, a s do, for example, marriageable stenographers who
som etim es encumber their office surroundings with a lush
undergrowth of high fashion. Nor must they u se their performance
time as an occasion to denounce their team. They must
be willing to accept minor parts with good grace and perform
enthusiastically whenever, wherever, and for whomsoever the
team a s a whole chooses. And they must be taken in by their
own performance to the degree that is necessary to prevent
them from sounding hollow and false to the audience.
Perhaps the key problem in maintaining loyalty of team
members (and apparently with members of other types of
135
co llectiv ities, too) is to prevent the performers from becoming
so sym pathetically attached to the audience that the performers
d isc lo se co them the consequences for chem of the im pression
they are being given, or in other ways make the team a s a
whole pay for th is attachm ent. In small communities in Britain,
for example, the m anagers of sto res will often be loyal to the
establishm ent and will define the product being sold to a
custom er in glowing term s linked by false advice, but clerk s
can frequently be found who not only appear to take the role
of the customer in giving buying-advice but actually do so. 1
So, too, filling station m anagers som etim es disapprove of
tipping because it may lead attendants to give undue free
service to the chosen few while other custom ers are left waiting.
O ne b asic technique the team can employ to defend its e lf
ag a in st such disloyalty is to develop high ingroup solidarity
within the team, while creating a backstage image of the
audience which m akes the audience sufficiently inhuman to
allow the performers to cozen them with emotional and moral
immunity. To the degree that team-mates and their colleagues
form a com plete so cial community which offers each performer
a place and a source of moral support regardless of whether
or not he is su c ce ssfu l in m aintaining his front before the
audience, to that degree it would seem that performers can
protect them selves from doubt and guilt and practise any kind
of deception. P erh ap s we are to understand the h eartless
artistry of the Thugs by reference to the religious beliefs and
ritual practices into which their depredations were integrated,
and perhaps we are to understand the successful ca llo u sn e ss
of con men by reference to their so cial solidarity in what they
call the 'i l l e g i t ’ world and their well-formulated denigrations
of the legitim ate world. P erhaps chis notion allow s u s to
understand in part why groups that are alien ated from or not
yet incorporated into the community are so able to go into
dirty-work trades and into the kind of service occupations
which involve routine cheating.
A second technique for counteracting the danger of affective
tie s between performers and audience is to change audiences
periodically. T hus filling statio n managers used to be shifted
periodically from one sta tio n to another to prevent the formation
of strong personal tie s with particular clients. It was found
that when such tie s were allowed to form, th e manager
l In the islan d community referred to in this report, I heard a clerk say to a
customer a s the clerk was handing over a bottle of cherry pop to him, <( I
do not se e how you can drink that stuff.” No one p resen t considered this
to be surprising frankness, and sim ilar comments could be heard every
day in the shops on the island.
136
sometimes placed the in te rests of a friend who needed credit
before the in terests of the social establishm ent. 1 Bank
m anagers and m inisters have been routinely shifted for sim ilar
reasons, a s have certain colonial adm inistrators. Some female
professionals provide another illustration, as the following
reference to organized prostitution su g g e s ts :
T h e Syndicate handles th at these days. The girls don’t sta y in one
placc long enough to really pet on speaking term s with anybody- T h ere^
not so much chance of a girl falling in love with som e guy—you know,
and cau sin g a squawk. Anyway, the hustler who's in Chicago this
week is in St. Louis nextt or moving around to half a dozen p la c e s in
town before being sent somewhere else. And they never know where
they're going until they're told. 2
2. DRAMATURGICAL DISCIPLIN E. It is crucial for the
m aintenance of the team ’s performance that each member of
the team p o s s e s s dramaturgical discipline,, and exercise it in
presenting his own part. I refer to the fact that while the
performer is ostensibly immersed and given over to the activity
he is performing, and is apparently engrossed in h is actions
in a spontaneous, uncalculating way, he must none the le s s
be affectively dissociated from his presentation in a way that
leav es him free to cope with dramaturgical contingencies as
they arise. He must offer a show of intellectual and emotional
involvement in the activity he is piesenting, but must keep
himself from actually being carried away by his own show
le st this destroy his involvement in the task of putting on a
successful performance.
A performer who is disciplined, dramaturgically speaking,
is someone who remembers his part and-does not commit unmeant
gestures or faux p as in performing it. He is someone with
d iscretion: he does not give the show away by involuntarily
disclosing its secrets. He is someone with 'p re se n c e of
m ind’ who can cover up on the spur of the moment for
inappropriate behaviour on the part of his team-mates, while
all the time maintaining the im pression that he is merely playing
his part. And if a disruption of the performance cannot be
avoided or concealed, the disciplined performer will be prepared
to offer a plausible reason for discounting the disruptive event,
a joking manner to remove its importance, or deep apology
and self-abasem ent to reinstate those held responsible for it.
The disciplined performer is algo someone with 'self-co n tro l.'
'O f course this betrayal is system atically faked in some commercial
establish m en ts where the customer is given a ' special * cut price by a
clerk who claims to be doing this in order to secure the buyer as a steady
personal customer.
2 Charles Hamilton, Men o f the Underworld (New York: Macmillan, 1952),
p. 222.
137
He can suppress his emotional response to his private problems,
to h is team-mates when they make m istakes, and to the audience
when they induce untoward affection or hostility in him. And
he can stop him self from laughing about matters which are
defined a s serious and stop him self from taking seriously
m atters defined a s humorous. In other words, he can suppress
his spontaneous feelings in order to give the appearance of
sticking to the affective line, the expressive status quo,
e s ta b lish e d by his team ’s performance, for a display of proscribed
affect may not only lead to improper disclo su res and
offence to the working c o n sen su s but may also implicitly
extend to the audience the sta tu s of team member. And the
disciplined performer is someone with sufficient poise to move
from private p la c e s of informality to public ones of varying
degrees of formality, without allowing such changes to confuse
him. 1
P e rh a p s the focus of dramaturgical discipline is to be
found in the management of one’s face and voice. Here is the
crucial test of one’s ability as a performer. Actual affective
resp o n se must be concealed and an appropriate affective
resp o n se must be displayed. T easing, it often seem s, is an
informal initiation device employed by a team to train and
te s t the capacity of its new members to 'ta k e a joke,’ that
is , tn su stain a friendly manner while perhaps not feeling it.
When an individual p a s s e s such a te s t of expression-control,
whether he receiv es it from his new team-mates in a spirit of
jest or from an unexpected n ec essity of playing in a serious
performance, he can thereafter venture forth as a player who
can trust himself and be trusted by others. A very nice
illustration of this is given in a forthcoming paper by Howard
S. B ecker on marijuana smoking. Becker reports that the
irregular user of the drug has a great fear of finding himself,
while under the influence of the drug, in the immediate presence
of parents or work a s so c ia te s who will expect an intimate
undrugged performance from him. Apparently the irregular
user d o es not become a confirmed regular user until he le a m s
he can be ' high ’ and yet carry off a performance before nonsm
okers without betraying him self. The same iss u e arises,
perhaps in a le s s dramatic form, in ordinary family life, when
a decisio n has to be reached a s to the point in their training
at which young members of the team can be taken to public
and semi-public cerem onies, for only when the child is ready
to keep control of his temper will he be a trustworthy participant
on such o ccasions.
1 For an example sec P ag e, op. cil., pp. 91-92.
138
3. DRAMATURGICAL CIRCUMSPECTION- Loyalty and
discipline, in the dramaturgical se n se of th ese terms, are
attributes required of team-mates if the show they put on is
to be sustained. In addition, it will be useful if the members
of the team exercise foresight and design in determining in
advance how best to stag e a show. Prudence m ust be exercised.
When there is little chance of being seen, opportunities for
relaxation can be tak en ; when there is little chance of being
put to a test, the cold facts can be presented in a glowing
light and the performers can play their part for all it is worth,
investing ic with full dignity. If no care and honesty are
exercised, then disruptions are likely to occur; if rigid care
and honesty are exercised, then the performers are not likely
to be understood ' only too well ’ but they may be misunderstood,
insufficiently understood, or greatly limited in what they can
build out of the dramaturgical opportunities open to them. In
other words, in the interests of the team, performers will be
required to ex ercise prudence and circum spection in staging
the show, preparing m advance for likely contingencies and
exploiting the opportunities that remain. The ex ercise or
expression of dramaturgical circum spection takes well-known
forms; some of these techniques for managing im pressions
will be considered hert.
Obviously, one such technique is for the team to choose
members who are loyal and disciplined, and a second one is
lor the team to acquire a clea r idea as to how much loyalty
and discipline it can rely on from the membership a s a whole,
for the degree to which these attributes are p o sse sse d will
markedly affect the likelihood of carrying off a performance
and hence the safety of investing the performance with
serio u sn ess, weight, and dignity.
We will also find that the circumspect performer will attempt
to se le c t the kind of audience that will give a minimum of
trouble in terms of the show the performer wants to put on
and the show he does not want to have to put on. Thus it is
reported that teachers often favour neither low er-class pupils
nor upper-class ones, because both groups may make it difficult
to maintain in the classroom the kind of definition of the
situation which affirms the professional teacher role. 1
T eachers will transfer to m iddle-class schools for th e se
dramaturgical reasons. So, too, it is reported that some nurses
like to work in an operating room rather than on a ward because
in the operating room m easures are taken to ensure that the
audience, who numbers only one, is soon oblivious to the
1 Becker, 'S o c ia l C la s s V ariations . . op. cit., pp. 461-462.
139
w e a k n esse s of the show, permitting the operating team to
relax and devote its e lf to the technological requirem ents of
actions a s opposed to the dramaturgical ones. 1 Once the
audience is asleep it is even possible to bring in a 'g h o st
su rg eo n ’ to perform the task s that others who were there will
later claim to have done. 2 Similarly, given the fact that
husband and wife are required to express marital solidarity
by both showing the sam e regard for those whom they entertain,
it is n ec essary to exclude from their g u ests those persons
about whom husband and wife feel differently. 3 So also, if a
man of influence and power is to make sure that he can take
a friendly role in office interactions, then it will be useful
for him to have a private elevator and protective circles of
recep tio n ists and se creta rie s so that no one can get in to see
him whom he might have to treat in a h eartless or snobbish
fashion.
It will be apparent that an automatic way of ensuring that
no member of the team or no member of the audience a c ts
improperly is to limit the siz e of both team s a s much a s
possible. Other things being equal, the fewer the members,
the le s s p o ssibility of m istakes, ’ d iffic u ltie s,’ and treacheries.
T hus salesm en like to sell to unaccompanied custom ers, sin c e
it is generally thought that two persons in the audience are
much more difficult to 1sell ’ than one. So, too, in some schools
there is an informal rule that no teacher is to enter the room
of another teach er while the other i s holding a c l a s s ;
apparently the assum ption is that it will be likely the new
performer will do som ething that the waiting ey es of the student
audience will se e a s in c o n sisten t with the im pression fostered
by their own teacher. 4 However, there are at le ast two reasons
why th is device of limiting the number of persons present h as
lim itations itself. F irst, some perform ances cannot be presented
without the technical a s sis ta n c e of a siz ea b le number of teammates.
T hus, although a general staff ap p reciates that the
more officers there are who know the plans for the next phase
of action, the more likelihood that someone will act in such a
'U n p u b lish ed research report by Edith L entz. It may be noted that the
policy som etim es followed of piping music by earphones to the patient who
is undergoing an operation without a general an esth etic is a means of
effectively removing him a s an audience for the spoken word.
2 Solomon, op. cit., p. 108.
3 T his point h as been developed in a short story by Mary McCarthy, 'A
F riend of the F am ily,’ reprinted in Mary McCarthy, Cast A Cold E ye (New
Y otk : Harcourt Brace, 1950).
4 Becker, 'T h e T each et in the Authority System of the Public School,’
op. cit., p. 139.
140
way as to d isc lo se strategic se crets, the staff will still have
to let enough men in on the secret to plan and arrange the
event. Secondly, it appears that individuals, as pieces of
expressive equipment, are more effective in a certain sen se
than non-human parts of the setting. If, then, an individual
is to be given a place of great dramatic prominence, it may
be necessary to employ a sizeab le court-following to achieve
an effective impression of adulation around him.
1 have suggested that by keeping close to the facts it may
be possible for a performer to safeguard his show but this
may prevent him from staging a very elaborate one. If an
elaborate show is to be safely staged it may be more useful
to remove oneself from the facts rather than stick to them. It
is feasible for an official of a religion to conduct a solemn,
awesome presentation, because there is no recognized way
by which th ese claim s can be discredited. Similarly, the
professional takes the stand that the service he performs is
not to be judged by the results it achieves but by the degree
to which available occupational sk ills have been proficiently
applied; and, of course, the professional claim s that only the
colleague group can make a judgment of this kind. It is there*
fore possible for the professional to commit himself fully to
his presentation, with all his weight and dignity, knowing
that only a very foolish m istake will be capable of destroying
the im pression created. Thus we can understand the effort of
tradesmen to obtain a professional mandate a s an effort to
gain control over the reality they present to their custom ers;
and in turn we can see that such control makes it unnecessary
to be prudently humble in the airs one assu m es in performing
one’s trade.
There would appear to be a relation between the amount
of modesty employed and the temporal length of a performance.
If the audience is to see only a brief performance, then the
likelihood of an em barrassing occurrence will be relatively
small, and it will be relatively safe for the performer, especially
in anonymous circum stances, to maintain a front that is rather
false. 1 In American society there is what is called a
‘ telephone voice,' a cultivated form of speech not employed
in face-to-face talk because of the danger of doing so. In
Britain, in the kinds of contact between strangers that are
1 In brief anonymous service relations, servers become skilled at detecting
what they se e a s affectation, and sin c e their own position is made clear
by their service role they cannot return affectation with affectation. At
the same time, customers who are what they claim to be often se n se that
the server may not appreciate this, and so the customer may feel ashamed
because he feels as he would feel were he as false a s he appears to be.
141
guaranteed to be very brief—the kinds involving 'please,*
‘ thank you,’ 'e x c u s e m e,’ .and 'm ay I speak t o ’—one hears
many more P u b lic School a c c e n ts than there are P ublic School
people. So also, in A nglo-A m erican society, the majority of
dom estic estab lish m en ts do not p o sse ss sufficient staging
equipment to maintain a show of polite hospitality for g u ests
who stay more than a few hours; only in the upper-middle
and upper c la s s e s do we find the institution of the week-end
guest, for it is only here that performers feel they have enough
sign equipment to bring off a lengthy show. 1
T he performer who is to be dramaturgically prudent will
have to adapt his performance to the information conditions
under which it must be staged. O bviously, he will have to
tak e into consideration the information the audience already
p o s s e s s e s about him. T he more information the audience h as
about the performer, the le s s likely it is that anything they
le am during the interaction will radically influence them. On
th e other hand, where no prior information is p o sse sse d , it
may be expected that the information gleaned during the interaction
will be of relatively great importance. Hence, on the
whole, we may expect individuals to relax the strict maintenance
of front when they are with those they have known
for a long time, and we may expect performers to tighten their
front when among p erso n s who are new to them. With those
whom one does not know, careful performances are required.
Another condition asso cia ted with communication may be
cited. The circum spect performer will have to consider th t
audience’s a c c e s s to information sources external to the interaction.
F o r example, members of the Thug tribe of India are
said to have given the following perform ances during the early
nineteenth century:
As a general rule chcy ptetended to be m erchants or soldiers,
travelling without weapons in order co disarm suspicion, which gave
them an ex cellent excuse for seeking perm ission co accompany travellers,
for chere was nothing to ex cite alarm in thetr appearance. Mosc Thugs
were mild looking and peculiarly courteous, for th is camouflage formed
part of cheir stock-in-ttade, and well-armed travellers felt no fear in
allowing th ese knights of che road co join them. T h is first step
su c cessfu lly accom plished, che Thugs gradually won the confidence of
cheir intended vtccims by a demeanour of humilicy and gratitude, and
feigned incercst in their affairs until familiar wich details of their
homes, whether they were likely to be m issed if murdered, and if they
knew anyone in the vicinity. Sometimes they travelled long distan c es
together before a su itable opportunicy foe treachery occurred; a ca s e is
on record where a gang journeyed with a family of eleven persons for
1 On the island studied by the wricer, some crofcers felc they could suscain
a m iddle-class show for the duration of a tea, in some cases a meal, and
in* one or two c a s e s even a week-end; but many islanders felt it only
sa fe to perform for m iddle-class au dien ces on che front porch or, betcer
still, in che community hall, where (he efforts and resp o n sib ilities of the
show could be shared by many team-mates.
142
twenty days, covering 200 m iles, before they succeeded in murderins
the whole parry without detection. 1 0
Thugs could give th ese performances in spice of the fact that
their audiences were constantly on the watch for such performers
(and quickly put to death those identified as Thugs)
partly because of the informational conditions of travel; once
a party set out for a distant destination, there was no way for
them to check the iden tities claimed by those whom they encountered,
and if anything befell the party on the way it would
be months before they would be considered overdue, by which
time the Thugs who had performed for and then upon them
would be out of reach. But in their native villages, the members
of the tribe, being known, fixed, and accountable for their
sins, behaved in an exemplary fashion. Similarly, circum spect
Americans who would ordinarily never chance a m isrepresentation
of their social sta tu s may take such a chance while
staying for a short time a t a summer resort.
If so u rces of information external to the interaction
constitute one contingency the circum spect performer must
take into consideration, sources of information internal to the
interaction constitute another. Thus the circum spect
performer will adjust h is presentation according to the
character of the props and ta s k s out of which he must build
his performance. For example, clothing m erchants in the
United S tates are required to be relatively circumspect in
making exaggerated claim s, because custom ers can test by
sight and touch whar is shown for them, but furniture s a le s men
need not be so careful, because few members of the*
audience can judge what lies behind the front of varnish and
veneer that is presented to them. 2 Similarly, if a housewife
is concerned with showing that she maintains clean lin ess
standards, she is likely to focus her attention upon the g la s s
surfaces in her living room, for g la s s shows dirt all too clearly;
she will give le s s attention ro the darker and le s s revealing
rug, which may well have been chosen in the belief that 'd ark
colours do not show the dirt.’ So, too, an artist need take
little care with the decor of his studio—in fact, the a rtist’s
studio has become stereotyped as a place where those who
work backstage do not care who s e e s them or the conditions
in which they are s e e n —partly because the full value of the
artist’s product can, or ought to be, immediately available
to the s e n s e s ; portrait painters, on the other hand, must promise
to make the sittings satisfactory and tend to use relatively
l Sleeman, op. cil., p. 25.
2 Conant, op. cit., makes this point.
143
prep o ssessin g , rich-looking stu d io s as a kind of guarantee
for the prom ises they make. Similarly, we find that confidence
men must employ elaborate and meticulous personal fronts
and often engineer m eticulous so cial settings, not so much
because they lie for a living but because, in order to get away
with a lie of that dimension, one must deal with persons who
have been and are going to be scrangers, and one h a s to
term inate the dealings as quickly a s possible, Legitim ate
businessm en who would promote .n venture under these
circum stances would have to be just a s m eticulous in
expressing them selves, for it is under just such circum stances
that potential investors scrutinize the character of those who
would sell to them. In short, sin ce a con merchant must sw indle
his c lie n ts under th o se circum stances where c lien ts appreciate
that a confidence gam e could be employed, the con man must
carefully forestall the immediate impression that he might be
what in fact he is, just a s the legitim ate merchant, under the
sam e circum stances, would have to forestall carefully the
immediate impression that he might be what he is not.
It i s apparent that care will be great in situations where
important consequences for the performer will occur as a result
of his conduct. T he job-interview is a clear example. Often
the interviewer will have to make d ec isio n s of far-reaching
imporrance for the interview ee on the sole b a s is of information
gained from the interview ee’s interview-performance. The
interview ee is likely to feel, and with some justice, that his
every action will be taken a s highly symbolical, and he will
therefore give much preparation and thought to his performance.
We expect at such tim es that the interviewee will pay much
attention to his appearance and manner, not merely to create
a favourable im pression, but also to be on the safe side and
forestall any unfavourable im pression that might be unwittingly
conveyed. Another example may be suggested: those who
work in the field of radio broadcasting and, especially, television
keenly appreciate that the momentary impression they
give will have a la stin g effect on the view the audience tak es
of them, and it is in this part of the communication industry
that great care is taken to give the right impression and great
anxiety is felt that the im pression given might not be right.
The strength of this concern is seen in the indignities that
high-placed performers are willing to suffer in order to come
off well : Congressm en allow them selves to be made up and
to be told what to w ear; professional boxers ab a se them selves
by giving a display, in the manner of w restlers, instead of a
bout. 1
1 See John Lardner's weekly column in N ew sw eek, February 22, 1954, p. 59.
*44
Circum spection on the part of performers will also be
expressed in the way they handle relaxation of appearances.
When a team is physically distant from its inspectorial audience
and a surprise visit is unlikely, then great relaxation becomes
feasible. T hus we read that small American Navy in stallatio n s
on P acific isla n d s during the la st war could be run quite
informally, whereas a readjustment in the direction of spit
and polish was required when the outfit moved to p l a t e s that
members of the audience were more likely to frequent. 1 When
in sp ecto rs have easy a c c e s s to the place where a team carries
on its work, then the amount of relaxation possible for the
team will depend on the efficiency and reliability of its warning
system. It is to be noted that thorough-going relaxation requires
not only a warning system but also an appreciable time lap se
between warning and visit, for the team will be able to relax
only to the degree that can be corrected during such a time
lapse. Thus, when a schoolteacher leav es her classroom for
a moment, her charges can relax into slovenly postures and
whispered conversations, for th e se tran sg ressio n s can be
corrected in the few seco n d s' warning the pupils will have
that the teacher is about to re-enter, but it is unlikely that it
will be feasible for the pupils to sneak a smoke, for the smell
of smoke cannot be got rid of quickly. Interestingly enough,
pupils, like other performers, will ‘te s t the lim its,’ gleefully
moving far enough away from their s e a ts so that when the
warning com es they will have to dash madly back to their
proper p laces so as not to be caught off-base.
I would like to mention a final way in which, dramaturgical
circumspection is exercised. When team s come into each
other's immediate presence, a host of minor events may occur
that are accidentally suitable for conveying a general impression
that is in co n sisten t with the fostered one. T his expressive
treacherousness is a basic ch aracteristic of face-to-face interaction.
One way of dealing with this problem is, ^as previously
suggested, to select team -m ates who are disciplined and will
not perform their parts in a clumsy, gauche, or self-conscious
fashion. Another method i s to prepare in advance for all
possible expressive contingencies. One application of this
strategy is to settle on a complete agenda before the event,
designating who is to do what and who is to do what after
that. In this way confusions and lulls can be avoided and
hence the im pressions that such hitches in the proceedings
might convey to the audience can be avoided too. Another
application of this programming technique is to accept the
fact that picayune ev en ts such a s who is to enter a room first
1Page, op. cit., p. 92.
145
or who is to sit next to th e h o ste ss, etc., will be taken a s
ex p ressio n s of regard and to apportion these favours consciously
on the b a s is of p rinciples of judgment to which no one present
will tak e offence, such as age, gross seniority in rank, sex,
temporary ceremonial statu s, etc. T h u s in an important sense
protocol i s not so much a device for expressing valuations
during interaction a s a device for 'grounding* potentially
disruptive ex p ressio n s in a way that will be acceptable (and
uneventful) to all present. A third application i s to rehearse
the whole routine so that the performers can become practised
in their parts and so that contingencies that were not predicted
will occur under circum stances in which they can be safely
attended to. A fourth i s to outline beforehand for the audience
the line of response they are to take to the performance. When
this kind of briefing occurs, of course, it becom es difficult to
distinguish between performers and audience. T his type of
co llu sio n i s esp ecially found where the performer is of highly
sacred sta tu s and cannot trust himself to the spontaneous
ta c t of the audience. F o r example, in B ritain, women who
are to be presented at court (whom we may think of a s an
audience for the royal performers) are carefully schooled beforehand
a s to what to wear, what kind of lim ousine to arrive in,
how to curtsey, and what to say.
Protective Practices
I have suggested three attrib u tes that team members must
have if their team is to perform in safety ; loyalty, discipline,
and circum spection. E ach of th e se c a p a c itie s is expressed
in many standard defensive techniques through which a set of
performers can sa v e their own show. Some of these techniques
of im pression management were reviewed. O thers, such a s
the practice of controlling a c c e s s to back regions and front
regions, were sufficiently d isc u sse d in earlier chapters. In
th is section I want to s tr e s s the fact that most of th ese
defensive techniques of im pression management have a counterpart
in the tactful tendency of the audience and outsiders to
act in a protective way in order to help the performers save
their own show. Since the dependence of the performers on
the tact of the audience and o u tsid ers tends to be underestim
ated, I shall bring together here some of the several
protective techniques th a t are commonly employed although,
analytically speaking, each protective practice might better
be considered in conjunction with the corresponding defensive
p ractice.
146
F irst, it should be understood that a c c e s s to the back
and front regions of a performance i s controlled not only by
the performers but by others. Individuals voluntarily stay
away from regions into which they have not been invited.
(T his kind of tact in regard to p lace is analagous to
'd is c re tio n ,’ which h as already been described a s tact in
regard to facts.) And when outsiders find they are about to
enter such a region, they often give th o se already present
some warning, in the form of a m essage, or a knock, or a cough,
so that the intrusion can be put off if necessary or the setting
hurriedly put in order and proper expressions fixed on the
fac es of those present. 1 T h is kind of tact can become nicely
elaborated. Thus, in presenting oneself to a stranger by m eans
of a letter of introduction, it is thought proper to convey the
letter to the addressee before actually coming into his immediate
p resen ce; the addressee then h as time to decide what kind of
greeting the individual is to receive, and time to assem ble
the expressive manner appropriate to such a greeting. 2
We often find that when interaction must proceed in the
presence of outsiders, outsiders tactfully act in an uninterested,
uninvolved, unperceiving fashion, so that if physical closure
i s not obtained by w alls or distance, effective closure can at
le ast be obtained by convention. T hus when two s e ts of persons
find them selves in neighbouring booths in a restaurant, it is
expected that neither group will avail itself of the opportunities
that actually exist for overhearing the other.
E tiquette as regards tactful inattention, and the effective
privacy it provides, varies, of course, from one society and
subculture to another. In m iddle-class Anglo-American society,
when in a public place, one is supposed to keep one’s nose
out of other people’s activity and go about o n e’s own business.
It is only when a woman drops a package, or when a fellowmotorist
gets stalled in the middle of the road, or when a
baby left alone in a carriage begins to scream, that m iddle-class
people feel it is all right to break down momentarily the walls
which effectively insulate them. In the rural island culture
studied by the writer, different rules obtained. If any man
happened to find himself in the presence of others who were
engaged in a task , it was expected that he would lend a hand,
1 Maids are often trained to enter a room without knocking, or to knock and
go right in, presumably on the theory that they arc non-persons before
whom any pretence or interaction readin ess on the part of those in the
room need not be maintained. Friendly housewives will enter each other’s
k itchens with sim ilar licence, as an expression of having nothing to
hide from each other.
* Esquire E tiquette, op. cit., p. 73-
147
es p ec ially if the task was relatively brief and relatively
strenuous. Such casu al mutual aid was taken as a matter of
course and was an expression o f nothing closer than fellowislan
d er status.
Once the audience has been admitted to a performance,
the n e c e s sity of being tactful does not cease. We find that
there is an elaborate etiquette by which individuals guide
them selves in their capacity as members of the audience.
T h is in v o lv e s: the giving of a proper amount of attention and
in te rest; a w illingness to hold in check one's own performance
so as not to introduce too many contradictions, interruptions,
or demands for attention ; the inhibition of all a c ts or statem ents
that might create a faux p a s ; the desire, above *li else, to
avoid a scene. Audience tact is so general a thing that we
may expect to find it exercised even by individuals, famous
for their misbehaviour, who are patients in mental hospicals.
T h u s one research group reports:
Ac another time, the staff, without consulting the patients, decided
to give them a V alentine party. Many of the patients did not wish to
go, but did so anyway a s they felc that they should not hurt the feelings
of che student n u rses who had organized the party. The gam es introduced
by the n urses were on a very childish level; many of che paciencs felt
silly playing them and were glad when the party was over and they
could go back to activ ities of their own choosing. 1
We also find that when performers make a slip of some
kind, clearly exhibiting a discrepancy between the fostered
im pression and a disc lo sed reality, the audience may tactfully
'n o t s e e ’ the slip or readily accept the excuse that is offered
for it. Further, we find that a t moments of crisis for the
performers, the whole audience may come into tacit collusion
with the performers in order to help them out. T h u s we learn
th a t in mental h o spitals when a patient d ies in such a way a s
to reflect upon the impression of useful treatment that the
staff is attem pting to maintain, the other patients, ordinaiily
disposed to give the sta ff trouble, will tactfully e a s e up their
warfare and with much delicacy help sustain the quite fal^e
im pression that they have not absorbed the meaning of what
h a s happened. 2 Similarly, at tim es of inspection, whether in
school, in barracks, in the hospital, or at home, the audience
is likely to behave itself in a model way so that the performers
who are being inspected may put on an exemplary show. At
'W illiam Caudill, Frederick C. Redlicli, Helen R. Gilmore and Kugene B.
Brody, ‘S ocial Strucrure and Interaction P ro c e ss e s on a Psychiatric
Ward,’ American Journal o f Orthopsychiatry, XXII, 321-322.
2 S ee T ax el, op. cit., p. 118. Vl'hen two teams know an em barrassing fact,
and each team knows the other team knows it, and yet ncM ier team openly
admits its knowledge, we get an in stan c e of what Robert bubin has called
'o rg anization al fiction s.' See Dubin, op. cit., pp. 341-3^5-
148
such tim es, team lin e s are apt to shift slightly and momentarily
so that the inspecting superintendent, general, director, or
guest will be faced by performers and audience who are in
collusion.
A linal instance of tact in handling the performer may be
cited. When the performer is known to be a beginner, and
more su b je ct than otherw ise to em barrassing m istakes, the
audience, frequently show s extra consideration, refraining
from causing the difficulties it might otherw ise create.
I would like to add a concluding fact about tact. Whenever
the audience ex e rcises tact, the possibility will arise that
the performers will learn that they are being tactfully protected.
When this occurs, the further possibility arise s that the audience
will learn that the performers know they are being tactfully
protected. And then, in turn, it becomes possible for the
performers to learn that the audience knows that the performers
know they are being protected. Now when such s ta te s of
information exist, a moment in the performance may come
when the se p arate n ess of the team s will break down and be
momentarily replaced by a communion of glances through which
ea ch team openly adm its to the other its state of information.
At such moments the whole dramaturgical structure of social
interaction is suddenly and poignantly laid bare, and the line
separating the team s momentarily disappears. Whether this
clo se view of things brings shame or laughter, the teams» are
likely to draw rapidly back into their appointed characters.
Tact Regarding Tact
It h a s been argued that the audience contributes in a
significant way to the m aintenance of a show by exercising
tact or protective p ractices on behalf of the performers. It is
apparent that if the audience is to employ tact on the performer’s
behalf, the performer must act in such a way a s to make the
rendering of th is a s s is ta n c e possible. T h is will require
discip lin e and circum spection, but of a sp e cia l order. For
example, it w as suggested that tactful outsid ers in a physical
position to overhear an interaction may offer a show of
inattention. In order to a s s is t in this tactful withdrawal, the
p articip an ts who feel it is physically p o ssible for them to be
overheard may omit from their conversation and activity anything
that would tax this tactful resolve of the outsiders, and at
the sam e time include enough sem i-confidential facts to show
th at they do not d istrust the show of withdrawal presented by
the outsiders. Similarly, it a secretary is to tell a visitor
149
tactfully that the man he w ishes to see is out, it will be wise
for the visitor to step back from the inter-office telephone so
that he cannot hear what the secretary is being told by the
man who is presumably not there to tell her.
I would like to conclude by mentioning two general
strateg ies regarding tact with respect to tact. F irst, the
performer must be sensitive to hints and ready to take them,
for it is through hints that the audience can warn the performer
that his show is unacceptable and that he had better modify
it quickly if the situation is to be saved. Secondly, if the
performer is to m isrepresent the facts in any way, he must do
so in accordance with the etiquette for m isrepresentation; he
must not leav e himself in a position from which even the lam est
excuse and the most co-operative audience cannot extricate
him. In telling an untruth, the performer is enjoined to retain
a shadow of jest in his voice so that, should he be caughc
out, he can disavow any claim to serio u sn ess and say that he
was only joking. In m isrepresenting his physical appearance,
the performer is enjoined to use a method which allows of an
innocent excuse. Thus balding men who affect a hat indoors
and out are more or le s s excused, since it is po ssib le that
they have a cold, chat they, merely forgot to take their hat off,
or that rain can fall in unexpected p la c e s ; a toupee, however,
offers the wearer no excuse and the audience no excuse for
excuse. In fact there is a sense in which the category of
impostor, previously referred co, can be defined as a person
who makes it im possible for his audience to be tactful about
observed m isrepresentation.
aranniD
In spite of the fact that performers and audience employ
all of these techniques of impression management, and many
others as well, we know, of course, that incidents do occur
and that audiences are inadvertantly given glim pses behind
the sc en e s of a performance. When such an incident occurs,
the members of an audience sometimes learn an important
lesson, more important to them than the aggressive pleasure
they can obtain by discovering someone’s dark. • PQf'i^red.
inside, or scrategic secrets. The members of the audience
may discover a fundamental democracy that is usually well
hidden. Whether the character that is being presented is sober
or carefree, of high station or low, the individual who performs
the character will be seen for what he largely is, a solitary
player involved in a harried concern for his production. Behind
150
many m asks and many characters, each performer tends to
wear a single look, a naked unsocialiEed look, a look of concentration,
a look of one who is privately engaged in a difficult,
treacherous task. De Beauvoir, in her book on women, provides
an illu stratio n :
And in spice o f all her prudence, accidents will happen; wine i s
s D i l i e d on her d ress, a cigarette burns i t ; th is marks the disappearance
of the luxurious and festive creature who bore herself with smiling
oride in the ballroom, fot she now assu m es the serious and severe
look of the ho usekeeper; it becom es all at once evident that her toilette
was not a se t piece like fireworks, a transient burst of splendor, intended
for the lavish illumination of a moment. It is rather a rich possessio n ,
capital goods, an investm ent; it has meant sa crifice; its lo ss i s a real
d isa ste r Spots, rents, botched dressm aking, bad h aird o s are catastrophes
still more serious than a burnt roast or a broken v a s e ; for not
onlv do es the woman of fashion project h erself into things, she h as
chosen to make herself a thing, and she feels directly threatened in
rhe world Her relations with dressm aker and milliner, her fidgeting,
her strict d e m a n d s-a ll these m anifest her serious att.tude and her
sense of insecurity. 1 _______________ __________________
i de Beauvoir, op. cil., p. 536.
151
CHAPTER Vil
CONCLUSION
The Framework
A social establishm ent is any place surrounded by fixed
barriers to perception in which a particular kind of activity
regularly takes place. I have suggested that any so cial
establishm ent may be studied profitably from the point of
view of impression management. Within the w alls of a social
establishm ent we find a team of performers who co-operate to
p resent to an audience a given definition of the situation.
T h is will include the conception of own team and of audience
and assum ptions concerning the ethos that is to be m aintained
by rules of p o liten e ss and decorum. We often find a division
into back region, where the performance of a routine is prepared,
and front region, where the performance is presented. We
find that a c c e s s to these regions is controlled in order to
prevent the audience from seeing backstage and to prevent
outsiders from coming into a performance that is not addressed
to them. Among members of the team we find that familiarity
prevails, that solidarity is likely to develop, and that se c rets
that could give the show away are shared and kept. A tacit
agreement i s maintained between performers and audience to
act as if a given degree of opposition and of accord existed
between them. T ypically, but not alw ays, agreement is stressed
and opposition is underplayed. We find that the resulting
working co n sen su s tends to be contradicted by the attitude
toward the audience which the performers express in the
absence of the audience aijd by carefully controlled communication
out of character conveyed by the performers while the
audience is present. We find that discrepant roles develop:
some of the individuals who are apparently team-mates, or
audience, or outsiders acquire information about the performance
and relations to the team which are not apparent and which
com plicate the problem of putting on a show. We find that
sometim es disruptions occur through unmeant gestures, faux
pas, and scen e s, thus discrediting or contradicting the
definition of the situation that is being maintained. We find
that the mythology of the team will dwell upon th ese disruptive
events. We find that performers, audience, and outsiders all
152
utilize techniques for saving the show, whether by avoiding
likely disruptions or by correcting for unavoided ones, or by
making it possible for others to do so. Tc ensure that these
techniques will be employed, we find that the team will tend
to se lec t members who are loyal, disciplined, and circum spect,
and to se lec t an audience that is tactful. T hese features and
elements, then, comprise the framework 1 claim to be characteristic
of much social interaction as it occurs in natural settings
in our society.
This framework is formal and abstract in the se n se that it
can be applied to any social establishm ent; it is not, however,
merely a sta tic classification. The framework bears upon
dynamic iss u e s created by the motivation to su stain a definition
of the situation which has been projected before others.
The Analytical Context
T his report h a s been chiefly concerned with social
establishm ents as relatively closed system s. It has been
assumed that the relation of one establishm ent to others is
itself an intelligible area of study and ought to be treated
analytically as part of a different order of fact—the order of
institutional integration. It might be well here to try to place
the perspective taken in this report in the context of other
perspectives which seem to be the ones currently employed,
implicitly or explicitly, in the study of social establishm ents
a s closed system s. Four such perspectives may be tentatively
suggested.
An establishm ent may be viewed ' tech n ically ,’ in terms
of its efficiency and inefficiency as an intentionally organized
system of activity for the achievement of pre-defined objectives.
An establishm ent may be viewed ‘ politically,’ in terms of the
actions which each participant (or c la s s of participants) can
demand of other participants, the kinds of deprivations and
indulgences which can be meted out in order to enforce these
demands, and the kinds of so cial controls which guide this
exercise of command and use of sanctions.
An establishm ent may be viewed 'stru c tu ra lly ,’ in terms
of the horizontal and vertical sta tu s divisions and the kinds
of social relations which relate these several groupings to
one another. Finally, an establishm ent may be viewed
'c u ltu ra lly ,’ in term s of the moral values which influence
activity in the establishm ent—values pertaining to fashions,
custom s, and matters of taste, to politeness and decorum, to
ultimate ends and normative restrictions on means, etc. It is
153
t' Se noted that all the fac ts that can be discovered about an
e^ a b lish m en t are relevant to each of the four perspectives
but that each perspective gives its own priority and order to
th ese facts.
It seem s to me tbat the dramaturgical approach may
constitute a fifth perspective, to be added to the technical,
political, structural, and cultural perspectives. 1 The dramaturgical
perspective, like each of the other four, can be
employed a s the end-point of an alysis, a s a final way of ordering
facts. T his would lead us to describe the techniques of
im pression management employed in a given establishm ent,
the principal problem s of im pression management in the
establishm ent, and the identity and interrelationships of the
several performance team s which operate in the establishm ent.
But, as with the facts utilized in each of the other p erspectives,
the facts sp ecifically pertaining to impression management
also play a part in the m atters that are a concern in all the
other p erspectives. It may be useful to illustrate this briefly.
The technical and dramaturgical perspectives intersect
most clearly, perhaps, in regard to standards of work. Important
for both persp ectiv es is the fact that one se t of individuals
will be concerned with te stin g the unapparent characteristics
and qualities of the work-accom plishments of another set of
individuals, and this other s e t will be concerned with giving
the im pression that their work em bodies these hidden attributes.
T he political and dramaturgical perspectives intersect clearly
in regard to the ca p acities of one individual to direct the
activity of another. For one thing, if an individual is to direct
another, or others, he will often find it useful to keep strategic
se crets from them. Further, if one individual attem pts to
direct the activity of others by means of example, enlightenment,
persuasion, exchange, manipulation, authority, threat, punishment,
or coercion, it will be necessary , regardless of his
power position, to convey effectively what he wants done and
what he is prepared to do to get it done arid what he will do
if it is not done. Power of any kind must be clothed in effective
means of displaying it, and it will have different effects depending
upon how it is dramatized. (Of course, the capacity to
convey effectively a definition of the situation may be of
little use if one is not in a position to give example, exchange,
punishment, etc.) T hus the most objective form of naked
power, i.e., physical coercion, is often neither objective nor
C o m p a r e the position taken by Oswald Hall in regard to po ssib le
p ersp ectiv es for the study of closed sy stem s in his ' Methods and
T echniques of Research in Human R e la tio n s' (April, 1952), reported in
E. C- Hughes et al., C a ses on F ield Work, forthcoming.
154
naked but rather functions as a display for persuading the
audience; it is often a means of communication, not merely a
means of action. The structural and dramaturgical perspectives
seem to intersect most clearly in regard to social distance.
The image that one statu s grouping is able to maintain in the
eyes of an audience of other sta tu s groupings will depend
upon the performers’ capacity to restrict communicative contact
with the audience. The cultural and dramaturgical perspectives
intersect most clearly in regard to the maintenance of moral
standards. The cultural values of an establishm ent will
determine in detail how the participants are to feel about
many matters and at the same time es tab lish a framework of
appearances that must be maintained, whether or not there is
feeling behind the appearances.
Personolity-lnteroction-Sociefy
In recent years there have been elaborate attem pts to
bring into one framework the concepts and findings derived
from three different areas of inquiry: the individual personality,
social interaction, and society. I would like to suggest here
a simple addition to these inter-disciplinary attem pts.
When an individual appears before others, he wittingly
and unwittingly projects a definition of the situation, of which
a conception of him self is an important part. When an event
occurs which is expressively incompatible with this fostered
impression, significant consequences are sim ultaneously felt
in three levels of social reality, each of which involves a
different point of reference and a different order of fact.
First, the social interaction, treated here as a dialogue
between two teams, may come to an em barrassed and confused
halt; the situation may ce ase to be defined, previous positions
may become no longer tenable, and participants may find
them selves without a charted course of action. The participants
typically sense a false note in the situation and come to feel
awkward, flustered, and, literally, out of countenance. In
other words, the minute social system created and sustained
by orderly social interaction becomes disorganized. T hese
are the consequences that the disruption has from the point
of view of social interaction.
Secondly, in addition to these disorganizing consequences
for action at the moment, performance disruptions may have
consequences of a more far-reaching kind. Audiences tend to
accept the self projecced by the individual performer during
any current performance as a responsible representative of
155
his colleague-grouping, of his team, and of his so cial
establishm ent. Audiences also accept the individual’s
particular performance as evidence of his capacity to perform
the routine and even a s evidence of his capacity to perform any
routine. In a se n s e th ese larger social u n its—teams, e sta b lish ments,
e tc .—become committed every time the individual
performs h is routine; with each performance the legitim acy of
these u n its will tend to be tested anew and their permanent
reputation put at stake. T his kind of commitment is especially
strong during some performances. Thus, when a surgeon and
h is nurse both turn from the operating table and the anesthetized
patient accidentally rolls off the table to his death, not only
is the operation disrupted in an em barrassing way, but the
reputation of the doctor, as a doctor and a s a man, and also
the reputation of the hospital may be weakened. T hese are
the con seq u en ces that disruptions may have from the point of
view of social structure.
Finally, we often find that the individual may deeply involve
his ego in his identification with a particular role, e sta b lish ment,
and group and in his self-conception as someone who
does not disrupt social interaction or let down the social
units which depend upon that interaction. When a disruption
occurs, then, we may find that the self-conceptions around
which he has built his personality may become discredited.
T h e se are consequences that disruptions may have from the
point of view of individual personality.
Performance disruptions, then, have consequences at
three le v els of ab stractio n : personality, interaction, and social
structure. While the likelihood of disruption will vary widely
from interaction to interaction, and while the social importance
of likely disruptions will vary from interaction to interaction,
still it seem s that there is no interaction in which the particip
an ts do not take an appreciable chance of being slightly
em barrassed or a slight chance of being deeply humiliated.
L ife may not be much of a gamble, but interaction is. Further,
in so far as individuals make efforts to avoid disruptions or
to correct for ones not avoided, th ese efforts, too, will have
sim ultaneous co n seq u en ces at the three lev els. Here, then,
we have one simple way of articulating three le v els of
abstraction and three perspectives from which so cial life has
been studied.
Comporisons and Study
In this report, use has been made of illustrations from
s o c ie ties other than our Anglo-American one. In doing this I
156
did not mean to imply that the framework presented here is
culture-free or applicable in the sam e areas of social life in
non-Western so cieties a s in our own. We lead an indoor social
life. We sp ecialize in fixed settings, in keeping strangers
out, and in giving the performer some privacy in which to
prepare him self for the show. Once we begin a performance,
we are inclined to finish it, and we are sen sitiv e to jarring
notes which may occur during it. If we are caught out in a
m isrepresentation we feel deeply humiliated. Given our general
dramaturgical rules and inclinations for conducting action,
we must not overlook areas of life in other so c ie tie s in which
other rules are apparently followed. Reports by Western
travellers are filled with in stan ces in which their dramaturgical
sen se was offended or surprised, and if we are to generalize
to other cultures we must consider these in stan c es a s well
as more favourable ones. We must be ready to se e in China
th a t while actions and decor may be wonderfully harmonious
and coherent in a private tea-room, extremely elaborate meals
may be served in extremely plain restaurants, and shops that
look like hovels staffed with surly, familiar clerk s may contain
within their rec e sse s, wrapped in old brown paper, wonderfully
delicate bolts of silk. 1 And among a people said to be careful
to save each other’s face, we must be prepared to read th at:
1‘ortunniely the C hinese do not believe in the privacy of a home as
we do. They do not mind having the whole details of their daily experience
seen by everyone that cares to look. How they live, what they
cat, and even the family jars that we try 10 hush up from the public are
things th.it seem to be common property, and not to belong exclusively
to this particular family who are most concerned. 2
And we must be prepared to see that in so c ie tie s with settled
inequalitarian sta tu s sy stem s and strong religious orientations,
individuals are sometimes le s s earnest about the whole civic
drama than we are, and will c ro ss social barriers with brief
gestures that give more recognition to the man behind the
mask than we might find permissible.
Furthermore, we must be very cautious in any effort to
characterize our own society as a whole with respect to dramaturgical
practices. For example, in current management-labour
relations, we know that a team may enter joint consultation
m eetings with the opposition with the knowledge that it may
be necessary to give the appearance of stalking out of the
meeting in a huff. Diplomatic team s are sometimes required
to stage a similar show. In other words, while team s m our
society are usually obliged to suppress their rage behind a
working consensus, there are tim es when team s are obliged
1Macflowan, np. c itt> pp. 178-179»
3//n</ , pp. 180-181.
157
to su p p ress even the appearance of sober opposition behind
a demonstration of outraged feelings. Similarly, there are
o cc asio n s when individuals, whether they wish to or not, will
feel obliged to destroy an interaction in order to save their
honour and their face. It would be more prudent, then, to
begin with sm aller units, with social establishm ents or c la s s e s
of establishm ents, or with particular statu ses, . and document
com parisons and changes in a m odest way by means of the
case-history method. For example, we have the following
kind of information about the show s that businessm en are
legally allowed to put o n :
The la s t half-ccntury has seen a marked change in the attitude of
the courts toward the question of justifiable reliance- Earlier decisions,
under the influence of the prevalent doctrine of ' cavcat emptor,' laid
great stre s s upon the plaintiff’s * duty’ to protect himself and distrust
h is antagonist, and held that he was not entitled to rely even upon
p ositive assertio n s of f a d made by one with whom he was dealing at
arm’s length. It was assumed that anyone may be expected to overreach
another in a bargain if he can, and that only a fool will expect common
honesty. Therefore the plaintiff must make a reasonably investigation,
and form his own judcment. The recognition of a new standard of
b u sin e ss ethics, demanding that statem ents of fact be at least honestly
and carefully made, and in many c a s e s that they be warranted to be
true, has led to an alm ost complete shift in this point of view.
It i s now held that assertio n s of fact as to the quantity or quality
of land or goods sold, the financial statu s of the corporations, and
similar m atters inducing commercial transactions, may justifiably be
relied on without investigation, not only where such investigation
would be burdensome and difficult, a s where land which is sold lies
a t a d istan c e, but likew ise where the falsity of the representation
might be discovered with little effort by means easily at hand. 1
And while frankness may be in c reasin g in b u sin ess relations,
we have some evidence that marriage counsellors are increasingly
agreed that an individual ought not to feel obliged
to tell his or her spouse about previous 'a f f a ir s ,1 as this
might only lead to n ee d less strain. Other exam ples may be
ciced. We know, for example, that up to about 1830 pubs in
Britain provided a backstage setting for workmen, little
distinguishable from their own kitchens, and that after that
date the gin palace suddenly burst upon the scene to provi le
much the same clien tele with a fancier front region than chey
could dream of. 2 We have records of the social history of
particular American towns, telling us of the recent decline in
the elaborateness of domestic and avocational fronts of the
local upper c la s s e s . In contrast, some material is available
which describes the recent increase in elaborateness of the
setting that union organizations em p lo y ,3 and the increasing
1P rosser, op. c it.t pp. 749-750.
2 M. Gorham and H. Dunnett, Inside the Pub (L ondon: The Architectural
P re ss , 1950), pp. 23-24.
3 See, for example, Hunter, op. cil,, p. 19.
158
tendency to 's t o c k ’ the settin g with academ ically-trained
experts who provide an aura of thought and respectability. 1
We can trace changes in the plant layout of specific industrial
and commercial organizations and show an increase in front,
both as regards the exterior of the head-office building and
as regards the conference rooms, main halls, and waiting
rooms of th e se buildings. We can trace in a particular crofting
community how the barn for anim als, once backstage to the
kitchen and ac ce ssib le by a small door next the stove, h as
lately been removed a distance from the house, and how the
house itself, once set down in an unprotected way in the midst
of garden, croft equipment, garbage, and grazing stock, is
becoming, in a sense, public-relations oriented, with a front
yard fenced off and kept somewhat clean, presenting a dressedup
side to the community while debris is strewn at random in
th e unfenced back regions. And a s th e connected byre
disappears, and the scullery itse lf s ta rts to become l e s s
frequent, we can observe the up-grading of dom estic es tab lish ments,
wherein the kitchen, which once p o ssesse d its own
back regions, is now coming to be the le a s t presentable region
of the house while at the sam e time becoming more and more
presentable. We can also trace that peculiar social movement
which led some factories, ships, restaurants, and households
to clean up their backstages to such an extent that, like monks,
Communists, or German aldermen, their guards are alw ays up
and there is no place where their front is down, while at the
sam e time members of the audience become sufficiently
entranced with the so c ie ty ’s id to explore the p la ces that
had been cleaned up for them. P aid attendance at symphony
orchestra rehearsals is only one of the la te s t examples. We
can observe what Mr Hughes c a lls collective mobility, through
which the occupants of a sta tu s attempt to alter the bundle of
ta sk s performed by them so that no act will be required which
is expressively in co n sisten t with the image of self that these
incumbents are attempting to estab lish for them selves. And
we can observe a parallel process, which might be called
'ro le enterprise,’ within a particular social establishment,
whereby a particular member attem pts not so much to move
into a higher position already established a s to create a new
position for himself, a position involving duties .which suitably
express attributes that are congenial to him. We can examine
the p ro cess of specialization, whereby many performers come
1See \Wlcnsky, op. cit.7 chap. ivt for a discussion of the 'w indow-dressing
function of staff experts. For reference to the b usiness counterpart ol
this movement see Kiesman, op. cit., pp. 138-139.
159
to make brief communal use of very elaborate social settings,
being content to sleep alone in a cubicle of no pretension.
We can follow the diffusion of crucial fronts—such a s the
laboratory complex of glass, s ta in le s s steel, rubber gloves,
white tile, and lab coat—which allow an increasing number of
persons connected with unseemly ta s k s a way of selfpurification.
And, finally, starting with the tendency in highly
authoritarian organizations for one team to be required to
spend its time infusing a rigorously ordered cle a n lin e ss in
the settin g the other team will perform in, we can trace, in
estab lish m en ts such as hospitals, Air Force bases, and large
households, a current decline in the hypertrophic s tric tn e s s
of such settin g s.
The Role of Expression is conveying
Impressions of Self
P erh ap s a moral note can be permitted at the end. In
th is report the expressive component of so c ial life has been
treated a s a source of im pressions given to or taken by others.
Im pression, in turn, has been treated as a source of information
about unapparent facts and as a m eans by which the recipients
can guide their response to the informant without having to
wait for the full consequences of the informant’s actions to
be felt-. E xpression, then, has been treated in terms of the
communicative role it plays during so cial interaction and not,
for example, in terms of consummatory or tension-release
function it might have for the expresser. 1
Underlying all social interaction there seem s to be a
fundamental d ialectic. When one individual enters the presence
of others, he will want to discover the facts of the situation.
Were he to p o s s e s s this information, he could know, and make
allow ances for, what will come to happen an-.l he co u li give
the others present a s much o f their due a s i s co n siste n t with
h is enlightened self-interest. To uncover fully the factual
nature of the situation, it would be necessary for the individual
to know all the relevant social data about the others. It would
also be necessary for the individual to know the actual outcome
or end-product of the activity of the others during the interaction,
a s well a s their innermost feelings toward him. Full
information of this order is rarely available; in its absence,
the individual tends to employ s u b stitu te s—cues, te sts, hints,
J A recent treatment of this kind may be found in T alcott P arso ns, Robert K.
B ales, and Edward A. Shils, Working Papers in the Theory o f Action
(Glencoe, 111.: T he Free P re ss , 1953). chap. ii, 'T h e Theory of Symbolism
in Relation to Action.’
1 60
ex p ressiv e gestures, sta tu s symbols, e tc .—a s predictive
devices. In short, sin c e the reality that the individual is
concerned with i s unperceivable at the moment, appearances
must be relied upon in its stead. And, paradoxically, the
more the individual is concerned with the reality that is not
available to perception, the more must he concentrace his
attention on appearances.
T he individual tends to treat the others present on the
b asis of the impression they give now about the p ast and the
future. It is here that communicative a c ts are translated into
moral ones. The im pressions that the others give tend to be
treated a s claim s and prom ises they have implicitly made,
and claim s and prom ises tend to have a moral character. In
h is mind the individual s a y s : "I am using these im pressions
of you as a way of checking up on you and your activity, and
you ought not to lead me astray .” T he peculiar thing about
th is is that the individual tends to take this stand even though
he expects the o thers to be unconscious of many of their
expressive behaviours and even though he may expect to exploit
the others on the b asis of the information he gleans about
them. Since the so u rces of impression used by the observing
individual involve a multitude of standards pertaining to politen
e s s and decorum, pertaining both to social intercourse and
task-performance, we can appreciate afresh how daily life is
enmeshed in moral lin e s of discrimination.
L et us shift now to the point of view of the others. If
they are to be gentlemanly, and play the individual’s game,
they will give little co nscious heed to the fact that im pressions
are being formed about them but rather act without guile or
contrivance, enabling the individual to receive valid im pressions
about them and their efforts. And if they happen to give
thought to the fact that they are being observed, they will not
allow this to influence them unduly, content in the belief
that the individual will obtain a correct impression and give
them their due because of it. Should they be concerned with
influencing the treatment that the individual gives them, and
this is properly to be expected, then a gentlemanly m eanj
will be available to them. They need only guide their action
in the present so that i t s future consequences will be the
kind that would lead a ju s t individual to treat them now in a
way they want to be treated; once this is done, they have
only to rely on the p ercep tiv en ess and ju stn e ss of the individual
who observes them.
Sometimes those who are observed do, of course, employ
th ese proper means of influencing the way in which the observer
161
tre a ts them. But there is another way, a shorter and more
efficient way, in which the observed can influence the observer.
Instead of allowing an im pression of their activity to arise as
an incidental by-product of their activity, they can reorient
their frame of reference and devote their efforts to the creation
of desired im pressions. Instead of attempting to achieve
certain ends by accep tab le means, they can attem pt to achieve
the im pression that they are achieving certain en d s by
accep tab le means. It is alw ays po ssib le to manipulate the
im pression the observer u se s a s a substitute for reality because
a sign for the presence of a thing, not being that thing, can
be employed in the ab sen ce of it. The observer’s need to
rely on representations of things itself creates the possibility
of m isrepresentation.
T here are many s e ts of persons who feel they could not
stay in business, whatever their b u sin ess, if they limited
them selves to the gentlem anly m eans of influencing the
individual who observes them. At some point or other in the
round of their activity they feel it is necessary to band together
and directly manipulate the impression that they give. The
observed become a performing team and the observers become
the audience. A ctions which appear to be done on objects
become g estures addressed to the audience. The round of
activity becom es dramatized.
We come now to the basic d ialectic. In their capacity as
performers, individuals will be concerned with maintaining
the impression that they are living up to the many standards
by which they and their products are judged. B ecause th ese
standards are so numerous and so pervasive, the individuals
who are performers dwell more than we might think in a moral
world. But, qua performers, individuals are concerned noc
with the moral iss u e of realizing th ese standards, but with
the amoral issu e of engineering a convincing impression that
th e se standards are being realized. Our activity, then, is
largely concerned with moral m atters, but a s performers we
do not have a moral concern in th e se moral m atters. As
performers we are m erchants of morality. Our day is given
over to intimate contact with the goods we dispiay and our
minds are filled with intimate understandings of them ; but it
may well be that the more attention we give to th e se goods,
the more d istan t we feel from them and from those who are
believing enough to buy them. To use a different imagery,
the very obligation and profitablility of appearing alw ays in
a steady moral light, of being a so cialized character, forces
u s to be the sort of person who is practiced in the ways of
the stage.
T H E KND
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