ABSTRACT

If we accept the notion of encounter as "any joint act between two or more persons where the interactants are maintaining symbolic, visual, auditory and at times, tactile contact" (Goffman, 1961), then clearly social encounters are always problematic since ''we literally do not know what to do with respect to another person until we have established his meaning for us and our meanings for him" (McCall and Simmons, 1966). The arrival at such consensus is a complex process, one which, analytically at least, continually oscillates between the statics of cognition and the dynamics of expression. A working agreement whereby interaction can take place occurs between the parties if there is sufficient congruence between the two pro­ cesses. Central to such theory is the concept of "role." Role is envisaged as the prime unit of analysis, adding an intermediary dimension to the philosophical problem of one and many and an alternative to the alleged dichotomy of sociological holism and atomism (Dawe, 1970). Theoretically, role is introduced to overcome the divergence of society and the individual (Dahrendorf, 1968) and to void the impasse of analyses found to be incapable of transcending the group or personality (Cooley,1929; Mead, 1934). Nevertheless "role" itself is not without difficulty: the abundance of intro­ duced distinctions [e.g. "ascribed-achieved" (Linton, 1936), role-set (Merton, 1968), "latent-manifest" (Gouldner, 1970), etc.] demonstrates its multiple interpretation among those holding differing, and even similar, theoretical positions.