Review on Wood, Goffman, and Gergen's reading - Essay Example

Identity is an indispensable way by which the physical being occupies its space in the society so as to communicate and interact with other individuals. It is a changing system of views that becomes maintained in various communications with different people and us. Identity, therefore, consists of views and opinions about us, other people and the social life that develops out of interactions with others. One should be able to identify oneself with his or her ethnic background, nationality. If one does not somebody else, will detribalize the individual and begin hating others because of your tribal or cultural differences.

If one identifies his/herself with a tribe, the behavior or actions will reflect who or what an individual is (Fine & Manning 13).Information about the identity of someone helps one to define the situation, it also enables people to know what to expect of them in advance, and what an individual expects of others in advance. Identity enables people to know how best to act in order to get the best response from them. In order to know an individual well, an identity enables individual to see what the individual says about himself is true.

It provides evidence of whoever the provider claims to be (Fine & Manning 18).To a communication scholar, identity enables the scholar resonates on why individuals judge themselves after their actions. One judges himself according to what others perceive him or her to be. One’s identity gets acquired through communicating with other people. Since we became not born with the understanding of whoever we are, we develop this understanding by communicating with other people. Goffman believes that individuals act purposive in order to bring out their desired state.

This they achieve by continually changing their actions in order to make their current opinion relate to their desired perceptual state. Goffman believe that what man does gets guided with respect to the perceived culmination of the activity. According to Goffman, embarrassment does not come from poor performance, but rather from the answers of others as perceived by one’s self (Fine & Manning 28).He suggests that individuals have an obligation to maintain their own and others claims to relevant identities.

Embarrassment emerges if individual, expressive facts become threatened by his assumptions about his own identity. Goffman suggests that human beings are performers who knowingly give and unwittingly give off different impressions. He claims that almost everyone is skilled in the arts of impression and deceit (Fine & Manning 17).According to Gergen in the traditional society, where relations were face to face and a firm sense of self esteem gets favored, an individual sense of identity becomes favored.

There was also strong agreement of what was wrong or right. With increased social saturation, the traditional sense gets disrupted, and one becomes thrust into new forms of relationships. One cannot, therefore, depend on identity as preferred by Goffman. This is because one confronts a new sense of demand. One can also change his identity at will one can be American to some people and Irish to other people, feminine in some groups and masculine in other groups (Fine & Manning 38). Identify, therefore, evolves among individuals, and it is not static.

Work CitedFine G, Manning. Blackwell Companion To Major Social Theorists. Oxford: Blackwells. 2000.