ABSTRACT
Erving Goffman offered a useful and insightful model of self-presentation in his influential book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Goffman proposed that our attempts to show ourselves in the world were not unlike the attempts actors make to present characters on stage. For this reason his model is sometimes referred to as a dramaturgical model (this is a slightly off-putting word which merely makes explicit the theatrical analogy: in the original German a dramaturg is a member of a theatre company who selects which plays will be produced and may assist in their actual production).
