2a. In the section “Misrepresentation,” Goffman describes how almost all perform

Question

2a. In the section “Misrepresentation,” Goffman describes how almost all performances require a little duping on the part of the performer: “Instead of merely doing his task and given vent to his feelings, he will express the doing of his task and acceptably convey his feelings. In general, then, the representation of an activity will vary in some degree from the activity itself, and therefore inevitably misrepresent it.” In your own words, describe why misrepresentation is such a consistent part of our performances.

2b. "The expressive coherence that is required in performances points out a crucial discrepancy between our all-too-human selves and our socialized selves. As human beings we are presumably creatures of variable impulse with moods and energies that change from one moment to the next. As characters put on for an audience, however, we must not be subject to ups and downs....A certain bureaucratization of the spirit is expected so that we can be relied upon to give a perfectly homogeneous performance at every appointed time" (p. 489).

Explanation / Answer

2a. Watching an activity happening and reporting it or talking about it won’t have the same effect thus it becomes very natural that people misrepresent an incident they themselves did or they witnessed while sharing it with someone. Even commentators who witness the game won’t be able to narrate something as it happens because they feel they need to improvise the message thus making it more appealing. No one would be able to narrate a message without misrepresenting at least one of the element. This happens because they were not able to understand the activity well or they are not linguistically competent or else they have just forgotten. Humans tend to forget things. Even the person who experienced the event won’t be able to explain it as it happened because they will be overcome with the emotion connected to the event thus manipulating the message. This ends up in misrepresentation.

2b. No one is God here to be static or to be there with all the good and bad things happening around us. No one could perform consistently, at least over a period of time because we are all human beings and our actions and performance are determined by various factors such as society, family, religion culture etc. In a sense I agree with the statement because one should have enough emotional intelligence so that one could control and regulate one’s emotions at all times whether it’s a happy event or a sad event.

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