拟剧论之前的戈夫曼(1945—1953)

Erving Goffman Before Dramaturgy(1945-1953)

美国社会学家欧文·戈夫曼以拟剧论被人熟知,但学术界较少探讨他在拟剧论之前的思想。在学术生涯早期,戈夫曼主要受社会人类学而不是符号互动论影响,他也关注职业角色、社会阶级等主流社会学偏爱的研究议题,而且注重经验研究,具有明显的方法论反思意识。在出版《日常生活中的自我呈现》之前,戈夫曼已在公开发表的论文里熟练使用“运作共识”“符号媒介”“误呈”“自我呈现”等关键术语,并且采用博弈的隐喻描述互动。他还关注社会性自我及其救疗,这也表明他在有意识地探索互动秩序问题。总之,拟剧论之前的戈夫曼已呈现出他后来的某些研究特征,尽管这些观念和思想较为粗糙、尚未形成体系。

The American sociologist Erving Goffman is well-known for his dramaturgy theory,but academic circles have seldom discussed his thoughts before the dramaturgy theory.In the early years of his academic career,Goffman was mainly influenced by social anthropology rather than symbolic interactionism.He discussed professional roles,social class and other mainstream sociological research topics.He also emphasized empirical research and had a clear sense of methodological reflection.Before publishing The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life,Goffman already used key terms such as"working consensus","sign-vehicles","misrepresentation","self-representation"in published papers,and adopted the metaphor of game to the description of interaction.He also paid attention to the social self and its remedy,which also showed that he was consciously exploring the issue of interaction order.Goffman's early research also reflected his focus on classification schemes and his unique way of thinking normal from deviance.In short,Goffman before the dramaturgy theory had embodied some of his later research characteristics,although these concepts and ideas were relatively crude and did not form a system yet.