Download Erving Goffman and advertising

Erving Goffman and the ‘hyper-ritualization’ of advertising
Erving Goffman’s observations about ‘hyper-ritualization’ in advertising have been
under-utilised by researchers and received little attention within the marketing
discourse (Manning 2008; Ytreberg 2002). Though Goffman’s framework for
analysing gender role stereotyping in advertising has been frequently used, the
overarching thesis of his work has not. This paper outlines Goffman’s analysis of
advertising, places it within and aside his more recognised and applied work, and
makes suggestions for wider application of ‘hyper-ritualization’ as a framework for
scrutinising advertising. Making the first steps to fill this theoretical gap, this paper
identifies the utility of Goffman’s work as twofold. Firstly, that further scrutiny and
development of Goffman’s work from a theoretical perspective in relation to
advertising is necessary, and secondly that through this the concept of ‘hyperritualization’ can be better utilised to contribute to broad debates surrounding the
character of advertising.
‘Hyper-ritualization’ in advertising
Goffman’s critique of advertising was first published in 1976 as a sole-authored
special edition of the journal Studies in the Anthropology of Visual Communication
and later, with minor amendments, as the 1979 monograph Gender Advertisements.
Goffman (1979) argues that advertisements offered a clear representation of the
socially defined and constructed nature of gender relations. He argued that gender
representations in advertisements could best be understood through comparison with
the parent-child relationship, with women behaving in a subordinate manner more
appropriate for children.
Beyond this analysis of gender roles, and more relevant to the themes of this paper,
Goffman suggested there was a representation of normative perceptions of reality
present in these images. His analysis of close to 400 advertisements showed the
creation of a “pseudo-reality that is better than real” (Goffman 1979, p.23). This he
refers to as ‘hyper-ritualization’:
“By and large advertisers do not create the ritualized expressions
they employ; they seem to draw upon the same corpus of displays,
the same ritual idiom, that is the resource of all of us who
participate in social situations and to the same end: the rendering of
glimpsed action readable. If anything, advertisers conventionalize
our conventions, stylize what is already a stylization, make frivolous
use of what is already something considerably cut off from
contextual controls. Their hype is hyper-ritualization.” (Goffman,
1979, p.84).
Goffman’s analysis highlights a supposed ‘realism’ in advertising: a depiction of
scenes which, though often not, could be real. He argues that advertising photographs
should look strange to the viewer, because of this largely unattainable pseudo-reality,
but often do not. This he attributes to the fact that, in such photographs, advertisers
take something which exists and use it to form a distorted reflection. The senses and
1
occasions which do not exhibit the specific required social ideal, and the “dull
footage” of everyday life, are stripped away. Goffman’s analysis of advertising as a
hyper-ritualized replication of social interaction is a useful framework for the
understanding of advertising deserving of greater attention and validation. This call
for validation is echoed by Richard W. Pollay (1978) in his critique of Goffman’s
special edition. Further work exploring and building on Goffman’s ‘hyperritualization’ can contribute to theoretical conceptions of advertising, and to broad
debates regarding the role and character of advertising (for contributions, but a by no
means exhaustive literature, on the role and character of advertising see Belk &
Pollay, 1985; Boorstin, 1973; Bucklin, 1965; Holbrook, 1987; Lantos, 1987; Lasch,
1972; Lears, 1973; Leiss et al, 1997; Lippke, 1989; Marchand, 1985; Nelson, 1974;
Pollay, 1985, 1986 & 1987; Scott, 1994; Simons, 2001; Williamson, 1978).
The “other Goffman”?
Gender Advertisements differs substantially from the bulk of Goffman’s more widely
utilised work dealing with symbolic interaction. His seminal publication, The
Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1956), built upon his doctoral dissertation and a
subsequent essay, and forms a large part of the dramaturgical perspective of sociology
developed by Goffman. Its focus is on face-to-face interaction and the performance
this involves, outlining front- and back-stage differences in individuals. “He
scrupulously noted the social exchanges between individuals, not only the words but
also the tone, the accent, the body language, the gestures, the withdrawals, the
silences.” (Hacking, 2004). Goffman (1956) argues that a theatrical projection of the
self is evident in all such encounters.
Goffman’s work centring on symbolic interaction continued most notably with
Behavior in Public Places (1963), Interaction Ritual (1967), and Strategic Interaction
(1969), which also made a significant contribution to the development of game
theory. Further work dealt with the effect of total institutions on a patient’s selfidentity (Asylums, 1961) and the concealment of frailties of character in social
situations to protect self-identity (Stigma, 1963). He was interested in how people
constituted themselves, their self-definition, and the manner in which they were
received (Hacking, 2004). “He made a simple point in understated, dramatic fashion:
we are all performers in the interest of order.” (Manning 2008, p. 679). This
performance in the pursuit of normative expectations of order or reality can also be
seen in Goffman’s conception of ‘hyper-ritualization’ in advertising.
Though Gender Advertisements is a clear break from the work summarised above,
most notably in that it does not deal with in-person interactions, some central ideas
retain importance. The presentation of self-identity in a manner designed to provoke
positive reception in specific contexts certainly shares similarities with a presentation
of polished behaviours in the hyper-ritualization of advertising. Manning’s (2008,
p.680) conception, that a central theme of Goffman’s work is an ordering that
emerges from social performances embedded in a particular social situation, also
reflects this: “a performance is a sequence of gestures, postures, verbalizations or
actions seen by others (seen, not talked about) and responded to. The notion of
response is an important validating point; it is through the response that the first move
is confirmed as existing or having meaning.” It is a key argument of this paper that
the postures and actions seen, but not talked about, and validated by a response, are
2
present in the advertising images Goffman analysed. This response is driven by the
pseudo-reality reflected in the images; what is seen carries a significant enough
illusion of social realities and norms to be accepted and responded to. It is for this
reason more attention should be given to Goffman’s analysis of advertising and
‘hyper-ritualization’ to position it amongst his own, and others’ work, and to expand
understanding of it.
Goffman in advertising literature
Rather than taking Goffman’s overarching theory of ‘hyper-ritualization’ and testing
this in other advertising contexts, most subsequent use of Gender Advertisements has
lacked ambition. Most scholars utilise Goffman’s content analysis framework, to
further scrutinise advertising for representations of gender. Much work looks only to
recreate, or utilise a slightly amended method, to analyse magazine advertising in later
periods (or across historical periods) finding that many of the subtle gender
stereotypes highlighted by Goffman remain (Bell & Milic 2002; Belknap & Leonard
II 1991; Kang 1997; Lindner 2004; Mager & Helgeson 2011). Some work has
employed the framework in slightly different contexts, though the emphasis remains
on gender stereotypes rather than wider representations through ‘hyper-ritualization’.
For example, the framework has been applied to scrutinise the use of gender
stereotypes in tourism brochure images (Sirakaya & Sonmez 2000); the use of sexual
rhetoric in ‘lads magazines’ (Krassas et al. 2003); and to analyse gender and
leadership displays in the images on university homepages (Hoover et al. 2013).
Elsewhere the method has been extended to incorporate analysis of gender role
representations alongside race (Baker 2005; Millard & Grant 2006).
Though useful in examining Goffman’s method of analysis, these fail to articulate the
potential value of his work to the field of advertising – an odd feature of Goffman’s
legacy and one which deserves to be remedied. Ytreberg (2002) has outlined the
impact Goffman has had on media studies through use of his dramaturgical
perspective (see Altheide, 1985; Dayan and Katz, 1994; Gitlin, 1980; Meyrowitz,
1985; Thompson, 1995), ‘footing’ and his production format typology of roles (see
Fairclough, 1995; Scannell, 1991). However despite this contribution and the
acknowledgement inherent in this work of Goffman as a theorist of social interaction
there has been rare engagement with Goffman in terms of theoretical reflections on
the mass media (Ytreberg, 2002). In advocating Goffman’s theory of ‘hyperritualization’ to be built on theoretically, through its contribution to advertising
discourse, this paper to some extent echoes Ytreberg’s call. Similarly Ytreberg
highlights an emphasis, even within media studies specifically, on Goffman’s early
work on symbolic interaction as opposed to Gender Advertisements, Frame Analysis
(1974) which scrutinises a large amount of empirical material from mass media, and
his other contribution on mass communication Forms of Talk (1981), and particularly
its essay ‘Radio Talk’.
Toward a Goffmanian theory of advertising
Ytreberg has posited an argument for Goffman’s work on mass media and
communication to be taken more seriously from a theoretical perspective. He argues
that Goffman views social interactions of the mass media such as advertising as
interpreted with greater plurality due to their capacity for de- and re-contextualization.
3
For Goffman “advertisements mediate the ritualized interaction orders of society in a
way that anticipates and is already adapted to the variety of readings it will be subject
to.” (Ytreberg, 2002, p. 486). In the same way as individuals try to interact in a
manner appropriate to the arena in which interactions are disseminated so must mass
communications such as advertising. However, mass communicators have even less
control than an individual in a social interaction over reception. It is for this reason
that mass media interaction must be hyper-ritualized, condensing social interactions,
stripping away the superfluous background noise, in order to counter this impending
plurality of interpretation (Ytreberg, 2002).
Mass communicators such as advertisers are not the only actors trying to counteract
this plurality. The respondents to mass communication do so also, as highlighted by
Goffman’s analysis of broadcast radio in Forms of Talk. Here he showed that the
slightest mispronunciation, accidental innuendo and other errors were observed to be
derided by listeners in a manner far outweighing the likely response within social
interaction, where such mistakes would expect to be politely disattended. Hyperritualization in such communication is only increased in response to the hypercriticality of the responding audience (Ytreberg, 2002).
A key feature of Goffman’s work – both on social interaction and mass
communication – is his concept of editing, undertaken in order to create or script an
illusion. Editing, particularly in the form of omitting the unwanted messages
transferred in the quantitatively dominating “dull footage” of everyday life, is a key
feature of both the hyper-ritualization of advertising and projections of self-identity
and performance in social interaction (Goffman 1956, 1963, 1974, 1979, 1981;
Psathas, 1995; Ytreberg, 2002). Goffman’s concept of ‘framing’ is pertinent to both
social interaction and, more importantly here, mass communications such as
advertising. Goffman (1986, p. 21) loosely equates framing with the production of
meaning; frames render “a meaningless aspect of the scene into something that is
meaningful”. This, Ytreberg (2002) argues, is done by showing how frames are
anchored in the social order and how primary frameworks are subjected to many
layers of meanings. Within frames important keys – the conventions by which a given
activity, already meaningful as a primary framework, is transformed into something
similar to the activity but seen and responded to differently by participants and
viewers – play a significant role in the creation of meaning for viewers (Goffman,
1986; Ytreberg, 2002).
Of particular importance in keying and framing is the dramatic scripting outlined by
Goffman (1986) as the personal experiences depicted and made available to an
audience through television, newspapers, radio and other forms of mass media or
communication.
“This corpus of transcriptions is of special interest, not merely
because of its social importance in our recreational life, or, as
already suggested, because of the availability of so much explicit
analysis of these materials; their deepest significance is that they
provide a mock-up of everyday life, a put-together script of
unscripted social doings, and thus are a source of broad hints
concerning the structure of this domain.” (Goffman, 1986, p. 53)
4
Here we can see the connection between mass communications such as advertising
and social interaction at play in Goffman’s work, a feature neglected by too many
critics. Goffman’s dramatic scriptings, or ‘hyper-ritualizations’ – be they those in
advertising photographs, radio broadcasts or the planned presentations of self in
everyday social interaction – is the medium through which notions of reality, and
normative expectations, are created and identified.
Ytreberg (2002) highlights the prominent frailty of the thesis Goffman begins to
create in Gender Advertisements, its brevity. Though Goffman alludes to similar
themes in his other work of the late 1970s, that mass communication is always about
scripting illusions, and builds on earlier work to arrive at the concept, he does not
explicitly develop ‘hyper-ritualization’ further.
Conclusions
Goffman posits that his work on gender in advertising is an analysis of the gender
dynamics in society as distilled and presented within mass media communication. It is
often presented by scholars as a departure from his other work on symbolic
interaction and performance in the pursuit of accessible social meaning and order.
Following a call to scrutinise this particular work from a more theoretical perspective,
it is evident that it offers a more fundamental commentary on the influence of mass
media, and particularly advertising, on social interactions that emerges as an
extension of Goffman’s previous work rather than a departure from it.
Rather than the gender dynamics ostensibly presented as the contribution of
Goffman’s work on advertising, the truly interesting dynamic is that created between
the receiver (target of the advertisement) and the scripted illusion, by the ‘hyperritualization’ of everyday interactions. The social dynamic that Goffman offers a
commentary on is the complicity of the receiver by way of them recognising hyperritualized cultural forms and responding to them through subsequent performances.
As normative social orders are condensed into snapshot advertisements that use
touchstones for our daily lives, we internalise the snapshots but fail to adequately
extrapolate the typical narrative that underpins such stereotypes. Therefore, the
stereotype becomes a normative expectation in subsequent social performances and
interactions in real life. This embeds the stereotyped characters, the stylised dynamic
and the condensed language into our normative social order and lexicon. Enduring
mass media communications therefore move quickly from presenting an aspirant
parallel reality to being interpreted as reflective and affirming of the way we live our
lives. Through further interrogation of the Goffmanian concept of ‘hyperritualization’ and associated concepts from the wider discourse a more nuanced
theoretical understanding of the character of advertising and its relationship with lived
experience can be achieved.
5
References
Altheide, D. L. (1985). Media Power. California: Sage.
Belk, R.W. and Pollay, R.W. (1985) Images of Ourselves: The Good Life in
Twentieth Century America. Journal of Consumer Research, 11, pp. 887-897.
Belknap, P. & Leonard II, W.M. (1991) A conceptual replication and extension of
Erving Goffman's study of gender advertisements. Sex Roles, 25(3/4), 103-118.
Bell, P. & Milic, M. (2002) Goffman’s Gender Advertisements revisited: combining
content analysis with semiotic analysis. Visual Communication, 1(2), 203-222.
Boorstin, D.J. (1973) The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York:
Random House.
Bucklin, L.P. (1965) The Informative Role of Advertising. Journal of Advertising
Research, 5(3), 11-15.
Dayan, D., & Katz, E. (1994). Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History.
Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Fairclough, N. (1995). Media Discourse. London: Edward Arnold.
Fine, G.A. & Manning, P.K. (2003) ‘Goffman’. In: Ritzer, G. (ed.) The Blackwell
Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists (34-62) Oxford: WileyBlackwell.
Fine, G.A. & Smith, G.W.H. (2000) Erving Goffman. Sage: London.
Gitlin, T. (1980). The Whole World is Watching: Media in the Making and Unmaking
of the New Left. California: University of California Press.
Goffman, E. (1956) The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Doubleday.
Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and
Other Inmates. New York: Anchor.
Goffman, E. (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. New
Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Goffman, E. (1963) Behavior in Public Places. New York: Free Press.
Goffman, E. (1967) Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York:
Pantheon Books.
Goffman, E. (1969) Strategic Interaction. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania
Press.
Goffman, E. (1974) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience.
New York: Basic Books.
6
Goffman, E. (1979) Gender Advertisements. Massachusetts: Harvard University
Press.
Goffman, E. (1981) Forms of Talk. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Hacking, I. (2004) Between Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman: between discourse
in the abstract and face-to-face interaction. Economy and Society, 33(3), 277-302.
Holbrook, M.B. (1987) Mirror, Mirror, on the Wall, What’s Unfair in the Reflections
on Advertising? Journal of Marketing. 51(3), 95-103.
Hoover, K. F., O’Neil, D. A., & Poutiatine, M. (2013). Gender and Leadership: A
Frame Analysis of University Home Web Page Images. Journal of Academic Ethics,
Published online 2013, DOI 10.1007/s10805-013-9197-4.
Kang, M., (1997) The Portrayal of Women's Images in Magazine Advertisements:
Goffman's Gender Analysis Revisited. Sex Roles, 37(11/12), 979-996.
Krassas, N.R., Blauwkamp, J.M., & Wesselink, P. (2003). “Master your Johnson”:
Sexual rhetoric in Maxim and Stuff magazines. Sexuality and Culture, 7(3), 98-119.
Lantos, G. P. (1987). Advertising: looking glass or molder of the masses? Journal of
Public Policy & Marketing, 6(1), 104-128.
Lasch, C. (1979) The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing
Expectations. New York: W.W. Norton.
Lears, T.J.J. (1983) ‘From Salvation to Self-Realization: Advertising and the
Therapeutic Roots of the Consumer Culture, 1880-1930’. In Fox, R.W. & Lears, T.J.J.
(eds.) The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American History. 1880- 1980.
(pp. 3-38) New York: Pantheon.
Leiss, W., Kline, S., & Jhally, S. (1997) Social Communication in Advertising:
Persons, Products & Images of Well-being (2nd edition). New York: Routledge.
Lindner, K., (2004) Images of Women in General Interest and Fashion Magazine
Advertisements from 1955 to 2002. Sex Roles, 51(7/8), 409-421.
Lippke, R.L. (1989) Advertising and the Social Conditions of Autonomy. Business &
Professional Ethics Journal, 8(4), 35-58.
Mager, J. & Helgeson, J.G. (2011) Fifty Years of Advertising Images: Some
Changing Perspectives on (Gender) Role Portrayals Along with Enduring
Consistencies. Sex Roles, 64(3/4), 238-252.
Manning, P.K. (1992) Erving Goffman and Modern Sociology. Stanford University
Press: California.
Manning, P.K. (2008) Goffman on Organizations. Organization Studies, 29(5), 677699.
7
Marchand, R. (1992) Advertising the American Dream: Making Way for Modernity,
1920-1940. California: University of California Press.
Meyrowitz, J. (1985). No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social
Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.
Nelson, P. (1974) Advertising as Information. Journal of Political Economy, 82(4),
729-754.
Pollay, R.W. (1979) ‘‘Gender Advertisements’, Erving Goffman. ‘Studies in the
Anthropology of Visual Communication’, Volume 3, Number 2 (Fall 1976), pp. 65154 (entire special issue).’ Review article. Journal of Marketing Research, 15(2), 313.
Pollay, R.W. (1985) The Subsiding Sizzle: A Descriptive History of Print
Advertising, 1900-1980. Journal of Marketing. 49(3), 25-37.
Pollay, R.W. (1986) The Distorted Mirror: Reflections on the Unintended
Consequences of Advertising. Journal of Marketing. 50(2), 18-36.
Pollay, R.W. (1987) On the Value of Reflections on the Values in "The Distorted
Mirror". Journal of Marketing. 51(3), 104-110.
Psathas, G. (1995) Conversation Analysis: The Study of Talk-in-Interaction, Sage
Publications: California.
Scannell, P. (1991) ‘Introduction: The relevance of talk.’ In Scannell, P. (ed.),
Broadcast Talk (1–13). London: Sage.
Scott, L.M. (1994) Images in Advertising: The Need for a Theory of Visual Rhetoric.
Journal of Consumer Research, 21(2), 252-273.
Simons, H.W. (2001) Persuasion in Society. California: Sage Publications.
Sirakaya, E. & Sonmez, S. (2000) Gender Images in State Tourism Brochures: An
Overlooked Area in Socially Responsible Tourism Marketing. Journal of Travel
Research, 38(4), 353-362.
Thompson, J. B. (1995). The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Williamson, J. (1978) Decoding Advertisements, London: Marion Boyars.
Ytreberg, E. (2002) Erving Goffman as a theorist of the mass media. Critical Studies
in Media Communication, 19(4), 481-497.
8