26.《日常生活中的自我呈现》Self-presentation in daily life

The book we are talking about today is called Self-Presentation in Everyday Life, and it is required reading for all sociology students. Its author is Irving Goffman, one of the most famous sociologists of the 20th century. I am afraid no one who studies sociology is unaware of his great name. The core idea of this book is one sentence: life is like a play, it's all about acting. We can use Goffman's thesis to analyse impression management, personal branding and even children playing house.
Suppose, for example, a couple is arguing behind closed doors and suddenly a guest arrives at their home. What would they do? They would quiet down in silence and act as if they were not fighting. This is actually quite a strange reaction. You think about it, they haven't discussed it, so they naturally switch to this state, as if they both have the same script in mind. But let's put ourselves in the guest's shoes. He must have sensed that the atmosphere was not right, that the two had just been arguing. But he doesn't think they're pretending, he thinks they're behaving appropriately.
The so-called "mimetic theatre theory" means that "the world is a stage, everyone is an actor and everyone is an audience". The actors are acting according to the script, but the audience must also be a good audience and understand that the actors will behave differently on different occasions.
译文：
今天要聊的这本书叫《日常生活中的自我呈现》，这本书是所有社会学学生的必读书目。它的作者叫欧文·戈夫曼，是20世纪最著名的社会学家之一。学社会学的，恐怕没有人不知道他的大名。这本书的核心观点就一句话：人生如戏，全靠演技。这个观点叫“拟剧论”，我们平时说的印象管理、个人品牌，甚至小孩子过家家，都可以用戈夫曼的这个拟剧论来分析分析。
我们随便举个例子，假设，有夫妻俩关起门正在吵架，家里突然来了客人。他们会怎么办？他们俩会很默契地安静下来，显出没有吵架的样子。这个反应其实还挺奇怪的。你想啊，他们也没商量，怎么就自然地切换了这个状态，就好像他们俩心里都有同一个剧本。但是，我们反过来站在客人的角度看呢。他肯定能感觉出来气氛不太对，这两口子刚好像在吵架。不过，他也不觉得他们是在装，他会觉得，他们的表现很得体。
所谓“拟剧论”，就是说“世界是舞台，人人是演员，人人也是观众”。演员在按照剧本演，观众也得当一个好观众，得理解演员在不同场合，表现会不一样。