(2 of 3)
Goffman's thesis—he declines to call it a theory—rests on a fundamental assumption: all rational human beings share, without necessarily knowing that they do, a desire for public order. Society is founded on an unspoken mutual trust. The pedestrian assumes, without thinking, that the driver has no motive for running him down. Instead of fatally beating a fellow passenger who has borrowed his newspaper, the commuter can be expected to limit his objections to words or gestures directed at recovering his property.
As dissembled by Goffman, any social occasion takes on the convoluted determinism of a chess game, in which the moves vary widely but follow strict and unforgiving rules. For example, a man in an office answers his phone. While he is talking, what should his office visitor do? The rules forbid listening. They also forbid just sitting there doing nothing, which could support the suspicion that he is listening. So the visitor studiously exhibits what Goffman calls "civil inattention." Unable to avoid overhearing one side of the phone conversation, he feigns another activity—gazing out the window, ostentatiously lighting and puffing a cigarette—thus conveying or seeking to convey the impression that his attention is directed elsewhere.
Sympathetic Smile. Such behavior indicates a considerable dependence on the complicity of the audience, which is expected to accept the performance at its face rather than at its true value. In considerate society, the audience seldom lets the performer down—in part, as Goffman repeatedly notes, because the roles of performer and audience interlock. A man rushing for the bus dons a sheepish smile to indicate his awareness of how silly he looks. His observers reward his performance—that is, the smile—by smiling sympathetically back. With this response, they become performers, and the bus chaser becomes the audience.
The penalties for breaking the rules can be serious. Even minor infractions provoke them. Goffman has described the restrictions imposed on suitable behavior in the rain. A man in a trench-coat will naturally pass muster. So will one who is coatless, as long as he suggests by his deportment—hunched shoulders, an impromptu newspaper umbrella—that he is alive to his predicament. So will arm-locked young lovers, sublimely indifferent to their drenching. But someone who walks along unprotected and apparently unaware of the downpour is likely to evoke a startled and uneasy response.
The reason, says Goffman, is that he offends the hidden code of behavior to which all "normal" people subscribe. The man oblivious to the rain is guilty not just of a trivial impropriety, but of the greater sin of social unpredictability. No one can guess with any assurance what ceremony he will next profane. No one can be sure of his respect of public order, without which society would regress to the jungle. Goffman is still exploring the patterns of behavior at social gatherings, which he believes have all the systematic qualities of a language. He is also at work on another book that will apply his own experience as a Twenty-one dealer in Las Vegas to the social milieu of a gambling casino.