courses :: mas 963   the virtual society :: judith donath   erving goffman - the presentation of self in everyday life I was interested in the notion of control of the social situation introduced in Goffman's paper. He elegantly describes the complexity of the communication process as the definition of the interaction switches constantly between the audience consideration of impression and the actor's intention of expression. The actor is trying to manipulate the reaction of his audience, predominantly through using such "givens" as what he chooses to say, what tone he takes, what he chooses to wear and how he generally conducts himself in this specific setting. The audience, whilst taking all of the above into consideration, will also use the "given offs"- the involuntary expressive actions of the actor - as a way of weighting the reliability and credibility of what he is actually saying or claiming to be. This situation of "I know, that they know, that I know what really happened, but I can't let them know that...", is a familiar one, that I'm sure everyone has experienced on numerous occasions. Goffman's contention that the general victor in this game of control and manipulation is the audience is an interesting point. According to him, we are better at being a perceptive and successful audience, than a convincing and natural actor. Goffman chooses to analyze the whole concept of interaction and communication at the microscopic level, illustrating his argument with very real-world examples, that we, the reader, can readily identify with. Fabricating or embellishing a story only to be caught out or using entirely inappropriate vocabulary in a specific situation, results in a crumbling of the social order that had been previously established and can be excruciatingly embarrassing, and occasionally deeply traumatic for an individual. For Goffman, awareness of potential embarrassment is a motivating factor in our presentation of the self. Throughout communication, we employ defensive and preventative practices that seek to reaffirm that we are a believable person of good moral standing who deserves a certain level of respect. Although many of the additional "given off" features prevalent in face-to-face interaction are lacking in computer mediated communication, the establishment and maintenance of a person's identity in this situation is still an interesting and complex social phenomena. Hugh Miller has used Goffman's theories of real life communication to interpret electronic expression via email and personal homepages. Miller sees the risk of embarrassment as being reduced on the Web - you are less likely to find out that people think your website/your opinions/you are ridiculous then in real life. It is also easier for "your audience" to terminate an interaction with you. Instead of having to abruptly walk away, they can simply stop emailing you. Miller sees paralinguistic features, such as style, structure and vocabulary, as being the equivalent of Goffman's "given offs" in the web domain. susan herring - gender differences in computer-mediated communication Herring's paper is an interesting and personal look at computer-mediated communication. She states that men and women have both different posting styles as well as different communicative ethics and she illustrates her opinion with examples from several newsgroups. She characterizes the male style as being adversial, littered with contentious assertions, self-promotion and sarcasm. In stark contrast, she describes the female style as supportive, focused on community building and characterized by "expressions of appreciation, thanking" and making "other participants feel accepted and welcome." From personal experience I must agree with some of her findings. On certain newsgroups and mailing lists, her descriptions of typical male(aggressive, terse, superior) and female (apologetic, rambling, gushing) styles of writing are indeed borne out, but I don't think this is evidence enough to encompass all computer-mediated communication. I have also come across plenty examples of female posters viciously flaming fellow contributors and male posters writing supportive and appreciative comments about fellow posters. So how to explain this apparant contradiction? Perhaps constructing a different and broader set of research objectives when considering CMC might be one suggestion. For example, Herring's hypothesis is weakened by her conceptualisation of gender as a dichotomy. In using a binary model of gender, she doesn't seem to consider the possibility of a non-fixed notion of gender. It is possible for the same person to display masculinity, femininity, gender neutrality, or some combination of all three at different times and in different contexts. Goffman's idea of the self and of identity is of a fluid construct that is constantly being defined, questioned and modified. Perhaps it would be useful to bear in mind this more dynamic ideal when considering CMC. Herring has entitled her paper "Bringing familiar baggage to the new frontier." By bringing very familiar questions based around binary models of gender to the new frontier, I think she was doing what other feminist linguists(Bing and Bergvall) have defined as asking questions that ultimately strengthen the male-female dichotomy - the implication being that looking for binary gender differences helps create them. readings: goffman, e. the presentation of self in everyday life. introduction. gerring, s. 1994. gender differences in computer-mediated communication: bringing familiar baggage to the new frontier.   back