Frames: Goffman

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Contents

Readings

Chapters 12 and 13 of "The Goffman Reader" by Charles Lemert and Ann Branaman, Blackwell Publishing, 1997.

Related

Framing is a hot topic these days in analysis of political rhetoric. See George Lakoff's book "Dont Think of an Elephant" and Frank Lutz's "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear".


Discussions

Please post your critiques/commments on the required readings below. To do that, first login by using your user name and password, then click the "edit" tab on the top part of this page (between the "discussion" page and the "history" page), New to wikis? Read the Wiki editing guide. . Hint - Please put a whole line == ~~~~ == (literally) at the beginning of your submitted critique, so the wiki system will index, sign and date your submission automatically.

Seth Horrigan 11:43, 3 March 2009 (PST)

 Further, if we could not rely on our listeners grasping the point without extended elaborating, we could hardly afford the time to say anything;
 similarly, if they could not depend on our taking into consideration what they already knew, they could hardly afford the time to listen.

I wonder if Goffman was being deliberately ironic, considering that throughout his writing he engages in "extended elaboration" on almost every point that he makes. Also, his ponderous style seems to assume that he cannot take into consideration what we already knew, making it at times very difficult to "afford the time to listen."

Most of his points seemed strongly focused on the social norms governing conversation in 20th century Canadian and American society. He assumed that all intelligent adults have developed these skills, but I find that this is not nearly the case. These nuanced interactions are the result of extensive practice and the resultant skill in an otherwise useless skill. I am not even sure that the skill is something we should bother learning. Goffman acknowledgment that children can ask for the information that they need without the encumbering niceties that are generally demanded of adults. I generally find it refreshing to talk to people who do not slavishly adhere to the tedious norms that govern "polite" conversation and hinder or obfuscate meaning in layers of introduction.

Despite my personal distaste for Goffman's particular style of writing, and despite the fact that I do not find his in-depth discussion of American verbal constructions very useful, I did find some of the reading useful and interesting. Particularly, I find utility in the idea that for two people to verbally communicate, it is necessary for both to have a model of the other's knowledge and experience in order to properly frame the information that he wants to convey.

KetrinaYim 22:38, 3 March 2009 (PST)

The notion of frames, particularly in the context of games, bears a striking resemblance to the concept of the "magic circle" in games from Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga. Those outside the circle will simply see play taking place, while those inside the circle (the players) occupy a world created by the game and are bound by the game's rules and any physical confines (the playground, the field, the marked boundaries) and act accordingly. Outside observers may regard the activities taking place as nonsensical, but the same actions will be perfectly rational to the players because they are acceptable inside the magic circle. Unlike frames, however, there is the idea that the circle can be broken and the players unceremoniously thrust back into the "real world" by someone who chooses to break or ignore the game's rules. Huizinga calls this type of person the "spoil-sport", not to be confused with the "cheater", a player who recognizes the magic circle but is only pretending to play the game.

Kenrick Kin 00:07, 4 March 2009 (PST)

I really enjoyed reading Goffman's section on how to frame your dialogue so that you can presuppose everyone's on the same page, while adhering to social propriety. His examples are exactly the reactions I would have, maneuver's I would take, and situations I would find appropriate to randomly (or not so randomly) to talk to strangers. Get out of my head, Goffman!!

David (Tavi) Nathanson 04:11, 4 March 2009 (PST)

My first reaction to this reading was that James' subworlds seem related to Opinion Spaces (as Simon and I described in our presentation). Each Opinion Space represents a particular topic, and a user has a different position in each space (depending on his/her opinions on the respective topics) much like people have different realities with each subworld. This analogy presents an interesting question: if the world of the senses is the realist reality, is there an Opinion Space that is more real than other Opinion Spaces?

Like Kenrick, I also really loved reading the section on dialogue, and it rang true for me as well. Furthermore, Goffman's detailed breakdown of different interactions seems very related to the lately-hyped "pickup artist" community, as "pickup artists" break down interactions with women in much the same way.

Priyanka Reddy 04:40, 4 March 2009 (PST)

Similar to Kenrick and Tavi, I really enjoyed the sections on dialogue. I think, as they said, a lot of the interactions that Goffman talks about are used by everyone without thinking about it, based on social propriety. For example, the different ways to ask someone "What did you think of the movie?" are certainly something I would have done, but I would not have thought about why I was using different words in different situations.

I also really liked the parts where he talks about the situations in which 2 strangers can start talking without "summons, warning, lead-in, or preliminary arrangement". When he posed that question initially, I could not think of any such situations. But, once he started going into each situation, it started making me think of all the instances that fall into those categories. And, I agree with his explanation that anytime 2 people have the same thing on their consciousness, it becomes socially acceptable to initiate a conversation.

Brian Tran 08:46, 4 March 2009 (PST)

The idea of frames has oftentimes been portrayed in films, although not by name. Going off what Ketrina said, a movie featuring similar circles is "The Mask of Zorro." When the old Zorro is training the new Zorro, he places his apprentice in a drawn circle nested within many other circles and instructs his apprentice that nothing exists beyond that circle to focus his mind. A favorite example movie of mine is "The Matrix," a science-fiction film centered around two different worlds: reality and the fictional Matrix. People that live within the Matrix are completely unaware that everything they sense is merely nothing more than electronic signals sent to the brain by machines. People within the Matrix go through all the motions of living even though everything within that world is artificial: such as breathing and eating. Throughout the movie, it is discussed which reality is it better to know (the blissful Matrix or the harsh reality) and perhaps even more real in other people's eyes.

Simon Tan 04:25, 9 March 2009 (PDT)

@Ketrina - ... or a "Troll"/"Griefer" who plays a game and follows its rules only to eventually get to a point where he can cause havoc...

Anyway, I found that Goffman's concept of frames does work very well for human dialogue; he gave compelling examples that demonstrated the importance of having the same context when engaging in conversation with others. I did find that some of his examples felt a little outdated and excessively analyzed, but his selling of frames did work. As Seth said, I'm not sure it's applicable to *everyone* in modern society; in fact, I feel that such niceties when dealing with strangers are becoming rarer as we move into an era where talking to strangers is becoming less and less necessary. (I.e. there are always other things to do or other ways to get information that you want.)

If face-to-face conversations are getting rarer, does that mean humans are less prepared to engage in the manner that Goffman speaks of?

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