Alle Publikationen
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2017
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(2017): The phenomenology of self-presentation. Describing the structures of intercorporeality with Erving Goffman. In: Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (2), S. 237-254. DOI: 10.1007/s11097-015-9447-6
Abstract: Self-presentation is a term that indicates conscious and unconscious strategies for controlling or managing how one is perceived by others in terms of both appearance and comportment. In this article, I will discuss the phenomenology of self-presentation with respect to the phenomenological insights of Edmund Husserl and Merleau-Ponty regarding the visibility of the body within intercorporeal relations through 'behaviour' and 'expression.' In doing so, I will turn to the work of the Canadian sociologist and social theorist Erving Goffman. Goffman's account of self-presentation suggests why embodied subjects adopt certain styles of ordered bodily behaviour as determined by the broader social order, giving existential and social significance to the ontological structures of intercorporeal bodily communication. Following Goffman, I will suggest that the embodied subject is continuously-and constitutionally-engaged in implicit and explicit strategies to manage how the body is presented to others. In articulating self-presentation as a feature of intercorporeality, my aim in this article is to use Goffman's insights to extend Husserl's and Merleau-Ponty's accounts of bodily communication by demonstrating that bodily communication that is instantiated at the level of intercorporeality is always expressed through social life with its various historical, cultural and linguistic dimensions.
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(2017): The Body, Technology and Translation. Mapping the Complexity of Online Embodiment. In: Sociological Research Online 22 (2), S. 1-13. DOI: 10.5153/sro.4322
Abstract: This theoretical article considers the potential for a revival of sociological interest in online embodiment by developing a conceptual alternative to the predominant framework of self-presentation, and showing how social theory may benefit from exploration of this field. It starts by critically reviewing the discussion on online embodiment, pointing out its theoretical shortcomings, and arguing that they result from the difficulty that social theory has with accounting for the increased ontological complexity of embodiment induced by the pervasiveness of digital technologies. Treating a theory of practice as an inspiring perspective, it then adapts the notion of translation as a general term capable of grasping the complex relationships between physical bodies, digital technologies, reflexive selves and the social aspects of online embodiment. An important advantage of this concept is that it makes it possible to see the role of technology as constitutive without losing the sociological perspective, and encompasses a wide range of contemporary body-technology interactions. Furthermore, it also has the potential to foster a sociological understanding of the relationships between bodily, technological, mindful and social elements, and to do so without slipping into reductionism.
2016
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(2016): Multiple Audiences as Text Stakeholders. A Conceptual Framework for Analyzing Complex Rhetorical Situations. In: Argumentation 30 (4), S. 467-499. DOI: 10.1007/s10503-016-9394-6
Abstract: In public communication contexts, such as when a company announces the proposal for an important organizational change, argumentation typically involves multiple audiences, rather than a single and homogenous group, let alone an individual interlocutor. In such cases, an exhaustive and precise characterization of the audience structure is crucial both for the arguer, who needs to design an effective argumentative strategy, and for the external analyst, who aims at reconstructing such a strategic discourse. While the peculiar relevance of multiple audience is often emphasized in the argumentation literature and in rhetorical studies, proposals for modelling multi-audience argumentative situations remain scarce and unsystematic. To address this gap, we propose an analytical framework which integrates three conceptual constructs: (1) Rigotti and Rocci's notion of communicative activity type, understood as the implementation of an interaction scheme into a piece of institutional reality, named interaction field; (2) the stakeholder concept, originally developed in strategic management and public relations studies to refer to any actor who affects and/or is affected by the organizational actions and who, accordingly, carries an interest in them; (3) the concept of participant role as it emerges from Goffman's theory of conversation analysis and related linguistic and media studies. From this integration, we derive the notion of text stakeholder for referring to any organizational actor whose interest (stake) becomes an argumentative issue which the organizational text must account for in order to effectively achieve its communicative aim. The text stakeholder notion enables a more comprehensive reconstruction and characterization of multiple audience by eliciting the relevant participants staged in a text and identifying, for each of them, the interactional role they have, the peculiar interest they bear and the related argumentative issue they create. Considering as an illustrative case the defense document issued by a corporation against a hostile takeover attempt made by another corporation, we show how this framework can support the analysis of strategic maneuvering by better defining the audience demand and, so, better explaining how real arguers design and adapt their topical and presentational choices.
Keywords: breites Publikum, Communicative Activity Type nach Rigotti und Rocci, Goffman, Interaktionspartner, Kommunikation, Kommunikationswissenschaft, Konversationsanalyse, Öffentliche Darstellung, Öffentlicher vs. privater Raum, Öffentlichkeit, Publikumswirksamkeit, Rhetorik, Sozialer Raum / Kultureller Kontext, stakeholder, Stakeholder Concept (of Communication), Strategien zur Erlangung von Sympathie, Theory of interaction (Goffman), Wissen um Normen 2015
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(2015): How to be in public. The case of an early television show. In: Celebrity Studies 6 (3), S. 355-369. DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2015.1062647
Abstract: The process of image management, whether of celebrities or non-celebrities, involves attention to several different registers of communication at once. The act of appearing on television has always presented difficulties for ordinary people in managing these different framings' of their spontaneous behaviour. This is vividly demonstrated by the first ever Double Your Money programme on the newly opened British commercial channel ITN in 1955. The different performance styles that people employed, along with the key role of the presenter Hughie Green, are here examined in detail. The problems of historical TV research using programmes that were temporarily meaningful' are also discussed along with other examinations of this archival programme.
Keywords: Außendarstellung, Fernsehen, Goffman, Im (wissenschaftlichen) Diskurs, Image, Konfliktverhalten, Konstruktion des Selbst, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Observablen/Kriterien für sozial angemessenes Verhalten und dessen Bewertung, Öffentliche Darstellung, Öffentlichkeit, Reflexionen über MTR, Status / biologische Marker, Technik, TV -
(2015): The Festive Frame. Festivals as Mediators for Social Change. In: Ethnos 81 (4), S. 600-616. DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2014.989869
Abstract: Building on Erwin Goffman's (1974) notion of frame, the article approaches the festive' as a socially produced conceptual structure by means of which people organize their perception of and participation in the world. Picking up on the epistemic threats initially developed in early French sociology, it explores the ability of different elements and forms of the festive' to act as mediator for social change.
2013
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(2013): ‘The presentation of self in the online world’. Goffman and the study of online identities. In: Journal of Information Science 39 (1), S. 101-112. DOI: 10.1177/0165551512470051
Abstract: This paper presents an exemplification and discussion of the contemporaneity of Erving Goffman's work and of its applicability to the analysis of identity and presentation of self in the blogging and Second Life (SL) contexts. An analysis of online identity and interaction practices in 10 different cases of bloggers and SL inhabitants and of their online spaces is presented in terms of: expressions given; embellishment as a minor form of persona adoption; dividing the self; conforming and 'fitting in'; and masking, anonymity and pseudonimity. The key finding of the research is that, contrary to engaging with the process of whole persona adoption, participants were keen to re-create their offline self online, but engaged in editing facets of self. This emphasizes the key premise in Goffman's work that, when in 'front stage', people deliberately chose to project a given identity. It is concluded that Goffman's original framework is of great usefulness as an explanatory framework for understanding identity through interaction and the presentation of self in the online world. Equally, the online environment, with its enhanced potential for editing the self, can offer opportunities to contribute to the further development of the Goffman framework.
Keywords: Anonymität, blogging, Goffman, Im (wissenschaftlichen) Diskurs, Image, Informations- & Kommunikationstechnik, Konstruktion des Selbst, Mensch-Technik-Relationen (MTR), Observablen/Kriterien für sozial angemessenes Verhalten und dessen Bewertung, Öffentliche Darstellung, Realtechnik, Reflexionen über MTR, Second Life, Status / biologische Marker, Technik, Theory of interaction (Goffman), whole persona
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