Personal Narrative – How We Reveal Ourselves
When we talk to one another we engage in a ritual. Most people, of course, don’t think of it that way, but there are distinct patterns we follow in verbal exchanges. One type of exchange is the sharing of stories. The way we tell our stories to each other allows us to do so many things: build reputation, share awe, warn, teach, threaten, celebrate and explore, among others. Today we’ll discuss how we use stories to reveal ourselves and to reflect others.
Stories are our lives in language. Welcome to the Love Your Story podcast. I’m Lori Lee, and I’m excited for our future together of telling stories, evaluating our own stories, and lifting ourselves and others to greater places because of our control over our stories. This podcast is about empowerment and giving you, the listener, ideas to work with in making your stories work for you. Power serves you best when you know how to use it.
During my study of the personal narrative, I used Erving Goffman’s research and writings on the interaction ritual a great deal. I studied his work in detail because the idea of a simple conversation being a complex ritual was fascinating. As I broke apart his work I marveled that a mind could take apart such common everyday actions and find these patterns. But he was right on. We do follow patterns when we talk with one another, and as he discovered, “face” is the pivot point of the ritual.
Let me share some definitions:
“Face” as Goffman defines it, is the “positive social value a person effectively claims for himself by the line others assume he has taken during a particular contact.” One might consider this your base reputation.
A “line” is a pattern of verbal and non-verbal acts by which he expresses his view of the situation. Something like one’s perspective on a topic.
If a person is “in face” then the encounter allows that person to sustain an image of oneself that he/she is comfortable with and frankly takes for granted. Which means that your reputation is in-line with what you are comfortable with.
If a person is “out of face” it means that information has been brought forth that does not sustain the face being held for that person. Or, in other words, that the person has not maintained their reputation. For example, if someone considers themselves smart, and they are considered smart in their social groups, and they do something foolish, they are “out of face.”
“Face work” is action taken to make whatever he/she is doing consistent with the “face” he/she has established. So, you’re working to maintain your reputation as whatever you are comfortable with by the things you say and do.
“Poise” is the ability to suppress and conceal any tendency to become shamefaced during encounters.
To “Save Face” is a process by which a person sustains an impression for others that he has not lost face.
To “Give Face” is to arrange for another to get a better line than he could have gotten otherwise. So, perhaps to brag someone up upon introduction, which is not something they could have done for themselves.
You get the idea here. Basic concepts we understand and take for granted in our exchanges are actually part of a ritual that we intuitively understand because we have learned it through our cultural upbringing. So why do I want to take this apart? We are always discussing in this podcast how the power of story is a powerful tool. And, as I say in the beginning of every podcast, “power works best when you know how to use it.” Understanding how we use our stories, and what they do for us in these ritual exchanges, every day, allows us to purposefully manage “face” and understand what it means when we share parts of ourselves and our stories. By the time this episode is over you will have a greater awareness of how and why you use your stories in these exchanges.
One of the important aspects of “face”...
