ABSTRACT
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Goffman stresses the actor-audience relationship in communication, and he points out the importance of social setting to a performance. "The issues dealt with by stage craft and stage management . . . seem to occur everywhere in social life, providing a clear-cut dimension for formal sociological ana lys is . " 2 Goffman's analytical approach to social situa tions has been criticized for appearing to be "interaction," i.e., symbolic transfer between participants, as in a conversation; where in reality it becomes "social act ion," i.e., symbolic transfer that is not reciprocal, as in a one-sided argument. 3 In such evaluations, social relations are defined as the human transfer of symbols, or, actions communicated by an actor's body. In the audience environment, it is the "social action" aspect of communication that is in operation.
