Week 3 - Blog 1

Ch. 6 Presenting the Self

Audience segregation is discussed in Ch. 6 on p. 156. In Goffman’s dramaturgical perspectives, he discusses audience segregation as “a tactic we use to keep certain audience members apart so we can present aspects of the self specific to each audience.” As our text points out, most people put on different faces/masks when communicating with the different groups they associate with. Recently, a friend of mine had a birthday party in which friends from church and old college friends were invited. She was dismayed over the fact that she was unable to have two separate parties (one with church friends and one with school friends). She faced what the text refers to as “multiple audience problems.” She was forced into a situation where she had to maintain her self-presentation with two audiences during one encounter. What fascinates me about audience segregation is people’s inability to be consistent with all the people groups they interact with. If people felt free to be consistent with how they present themselves, there would not be a need for audience segregation.

Something else that stood out to me in this chapter was the discussion on strategies for presenting the self. The self-promotion strategy is discussed on pages 162-165. I find it very difficult to “sell” myself which is something we all have to do at some point, particularly when hunting for a job. In these types of situations, where you must endorse yourself in order to succeed, I find it difficult to do so without sounding utterly conceited. The text mentions that a self promoter may use tactics that makes them appear modest, such as following up a statement of self-praise with a statement that reveals a weakness. This strategy may work well in social settings, but I wonder if it would benefit “self-promoters” during an interview.