Erving Goffman

The term stigma and its synonyms conceal a double perspective: does the stigmatized individual assume his differentness is known about already or…

— Erving Goffman

The routines of social intercourse in established settings allow us to deal with anticipated others without special attention or thought.

— Erving Goffman

“In reviewing his own moral career, the stigmatized individual may single out and retrospectively elaborate experiences which serve for him to account…

— Erving Goffman

“When an individual becomes over-involved in a topic of conversation, others are drawn from the talk to the talker. One man's eagerness…

— Erving Goffman

“The more there is about the individual that deviates in an undesirable direction from what might have been expected to be true…

— Erving Goffman

The self... is not an organic thing that has a specific location, whose fundamental fate is to be born, to mature, to…

— Erving Goffman

The stigmatized individual is asked to act so as to imply neither that his burden is heavy nor that bearing it has…

— Erving Goffman

There is a close meshing with the ritual properties of persons and with the egocentric forms of territoriality.

— Erving Goffman

“The act of staring is a thing which one does not ordinarily do to another human being; it seems to put the…

— Erving Goffman

All the world is not, of course, a stage, but the crucial ways in which it isn’t are not easy to specify

— Erving Goffman

“Morning and lunchtime are times when anyone can appear alone almost anywhere without this giving evidence of how the person is faring…

— Erving Goffman

“Although the pictures shown here cannot be taken as representative of gender behavior in real life... one can probably make a significant…

— Erving Goffman

The normal and the stigmatized are not persons, but perspectives.

— Erving Goffman

“...the issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many…

— Erving Goffman

A performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment that the impression of reality which he fosters…

— Erving Goffman

Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated,…

— Erving Goffman

Society is organized on the principle that any individual who possesses certain social characteristics has a moral right to expect that others…

— Erving Goffman

The world, in truth, is a wedding.

— Erving Goffman

When a stranger comes into our presence, then, first appearances are likely to enable us to anticipate his category and attributes, his…

— Erving Goffman

“As a linguist suggests: " There are messages primarily serving to establish, to prolong, or to discontinue communication, to check whether the…

— Erving Goffman

“Here I want to stress that perception of losing one’s mind is based on culturally derived and socially ingrained stereotypes as to…

— Erving Goffman

Approved attributes and their relation to face make every man his own jailer; this is a fundamental social constraint even though each…

— Erving Goffman

I assume that the proper study of interaction is not the individual and his psychology, but rather the syntactical relations among the…

— Erving Goffman

When persons are present to one another they can function not merely as physical instruments but also as communicative ones. This possibility,…

— Erving Goffman

So I ask that these papers be taken for what they merely are: exercises, trials, tryouts, a means of displaying possibilities, not…

— Erving Goffman