In the first 5 weeks of my first
sociology subject boy have I learnt alot. I was so unaware of the ways in which
we conduct ourselves on a day to day basis and how this relates to and conforms
to ideas and research conducted by a variety of sociologists. I’m still taking
to this whole idea of sociology and getting my head around the whole thing
although I will do my best to decipher the ideas and topics.
One such sociologist whom I’d
never even heard of until now Goffman, poses some interesting ideas in the form
of written and unwritten rules which are commonly without realisation applied
to our daily lives- “Rules of Conduct”. (Well obviously applied without
realisation as I have not realised until now!). These ideas surround the idea
of deference and demenour, symmetrical and asymmetrical and obligations and
expectations just to name a few.
One particular idea that stood
out to me was the idea of Deference and demeanor. Whereby Goffman defines
deference as the way in which we interact and conduct ourselves in relation to
others and demeanor as being the way in which a person acts or ‘presents’ ones
self. Deference and demeanor are applied in almost every social setting – well
I cant think of one in which it doesn’t where we act in certain ways
(deference) because our demeanour ‘says’ we should act in that way. (Well
atleast that’s how I think it works- I could be wrong, Its going to take some
time to get used to this whole thing).
Whats your interpretation of
deference and demeanour? Do you act in certain ways because you feel you
should? I’m interested to hear your thoughts! J
No comments:
Post a Comment