The Presentation Of Self In Everyday Life

Scenes between workers, or workers and bosses, populate Goffman’s text. The recurring motif of labor dynamics becomes an essential and helpful example for Goffman’s overall analysis of performances, especially with respect to the way performances are spatially structured events divided between a front and back region. The language of front and back regions comes largely from the world of theater production (i.e., front stage and back stage). Moreover, just as within theater performances, everyday interactions between a performance team and its audience are divided between an area in view of the audience and an area that’s out of sight. Goffman finds this basic division between the visible/audible and the invisible/inaudible at work within every social interaction. Now, the reason labor relations recur in the text is that these performances perfectly exemplify the division between front and back stage. Regarding Goffman’s studies of the everyday social life of the Shetland Hotel in Scotland, we read the following description of the dynamics between the restaurant’s front and back stage:

“Over the kitchen stove, wet socks would be dried on the steaming kettle—a standard practice on the island. Tea, when guests had asked for it heavily infused, would be brewed in a pot encrusted at the bottom with tea leaves that were old.