Premium
The Dramaturgical Model of Behavior: Its Strengths and Weaknesses *
Author(s) -
Wilshire Bruce
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
symbolic interaction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.874
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1533-8665
pISSN - 0195-6086
DOI - 10.1525/si.1982.5.2.287
Subject(s) - nothing , impression management , order (exchange) , aesthetics , dramaturgy , social psychology , psychology , epistemology , sociology , art , business , philosophy , finance
By means of the dramaturgical model we freshly illuminate social behavior as role‐like “performances” in which persons manage the impressions that others get of them. This impression management involves the concealment of data in a “dramatic” struggle with those others who wish to penetrate one's “mask.” But the chief limitations of the dramaturgical model are that it excites the invalid inferences that offstage “roles” are more like stage actors' roles than they really are, and that the person is nothing but these “roles.” The differences between onstage and offstage behavior are kept in view when the metaphorical concept of “role playing” is re‐connected to its source in role playing onstage. Through an analysis of theatre and the concepts of appearance and time we conclude that while we must appear to others in a “role‐like” way offstage in order to be ourselves, we are nevertheless involved in world‐time offstage in a way that fundamentally distinguishes our “role‐playing” from an actor's role playing. We are our “roles”, but not just our “roles.”