Chapter Two Flashcards
What is identity?
Pertains to our social group (ethnic, sexual, religious, etc)
What is self-presentation?
Conceal faults, highlight strengths
Attractiveness Deception: online identity enhancement where we lie about our physical characteristics
Display rules: manipulation and control over emotional expressions
Emotional labor: the effort it takes to show different emotion than the one being felt
Both deliberate and unconscious
Social Identity Theory
Social identity theory explains how we develop and maintain our identity.
Politeness Theory
the specific ways we save face using communication
Communication Theory of Identity
Hecht (1993) introduced the communication theory of identity (four interdependent layers or frames that reflect how people see themselves and that affect identity development) **Personal, enacted, relational and communal **
* Personal Identity: The self-concept or individual understanding we have of ourselves.
* Enacted Identity: The communication, management, and performance of our identity.
* Relational Identity: The way we see ourselves in relation to others, including how we believe other people view us (perhaps, as kind, popular, or nerdy), our roles within relationships (such as sister, uncle, friend, or lover) and the joint identities we share with others (such as couple or family identities)
* Communal Identity: The way we see ourselves in relation to social identities (such as culture, generation, and sexual orientation) and social discourses (such as social media and popular culture depictions of people).
Dramaturgical Perspective
Dramaturgical Perspective– We constantly enact performances geared for audiences with the purpose of advancing a beneficial image of ourselves
Conditions of a dramaturgical perspective
We are more concerned with the performances that line up with core aspects of self
We put more attention to performances based on positive/negative consequences
We lean into performances directly related to our values of conduct
Dramaturgical perspective
Front stage: public behavior subject to observation
Back stage: private behavior that is free from scrutiny
Context is key: the only viable criterion on which performance success is judged is whether successfully advances the images that we wish to present to a particular audience
If it threatens this image, we back stage
The difference between Negative Face and Face-Threatening Behavior
Negative face: part of us that wants to be free from this bullshit (of caring what people think)
Face-threatening: behavior that detracts from our identity
