Social Frame of Reference

Social frame of reference refers to the condition under which social relations are defined, that is, the implicit and explicit rules governing human behavior in everyday social settings.

Erving Goffman, a famous sociologist in the U.S., has been among the key thinkers in this area of study. In his 1959 book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, for instance, Goffman proposed what a "dramataugical model" for analyzing human interaction. At the risk of over-simplifying the complexity of Goffman's theory, we will have a brief description of how this model works. This brief description should also help us better understand the concept "social frame of reference" and how it relates to increasing our intercultural skills.

One of our key concerns in this area is how people know what to do and how they relate to others as they enter various social settings on an everyday basis, such as waiting for our bus at the bus stop, ordering food at a mom-and-pop noddle shop, or greeting our relatives during Chinese New Year. Many people would respond by saying "We just know." On one level, this is a reasonable answer because most of us do not think about how we acquire all the explicit as well as implicit rules that govern our social behavior. Of course, following explicit rules are much more noticeable than implicit rules and they are a lot easier to do. When we see a sign that says "No Smoking," an explicit rule, we know right away that smoking in this setting is not allowed. But sociologists such as Goffman are interested in knowing more about how people learn, know, and follow implicit rules as they interact with others in various social settings.

Goffman proposed the dramataugical model to help address this question. The dramataugical model suggests that people more or less know how to behave themselves in various social settings, particularly when interacting with others, including strangers, because there is a "script" embedded in every social setting, be it a college classroom, a five-star restaurant, or a neighborhood supermarket. The script gives directions as to how the story (human interaction) is to play out. It consists of several important components, including: the ploy (e.g., dining in a restaurant); the characters or roles (e.g., waiters and patrons); rules governing the relationship between the characters (e.g., standard decorum when food is being order or served and so on); the dialogue (e.g., things being said between the waiter and his customers); the set (e.g., the dining room of the restaurant), the props (e.g., tables and chairs); the costumes (e.g., the waiter's uniform and the clothes that the patrons are expected to wear); and so on.

The directions embedded in the script are determined socially, through trial and error, through negotiation, and most of all, through on-going communication among people. Through the life-long process of socialization, we internalize all the do's and don'ts (e.g., what is proper or improper to do) in the various social settings that we have access to in our personal lifeworld; these social scripts are "handed down" to us over time. Since we are so accustomed to these social script and know the consequence of not following them properly (because we tend not wanting to be outcasts), we often feel obliged to conform to the specifications or fulfil the expectations embodied in these social scripts.

On another level, the script of every social setting is also determined by factors in the larger social-historical context in which the social setting is situated. These factors include, but are not limited to, race relations, gender relations, class relations, and so on. For example, in racially-segregated, gender-biased, or class-based societies, certain roles are off limited to people of certain race, gender, or class, respectively. In short, how people may relate to one another in specific social settings is determined by their race, gender, and or social class.

It is also important to note that all the social scripts are culture-bound. For example, the script of a small noddle shop in Tainan is most likely to be different from the script of a small noddle (or pasta) shop in southern Italy even though they both are small noddle shops. Sure enough, they share certain features in common, such as they both carry the ploy of "dining in a small noddle shop." But the scripts of these two small noddle shops are on another, finer level heavily invested with two different sets of "local knowledge" or "local culture or ways of doing things" (e.g., the cuisine, the menu, tipping, manner of eating, etc.). So, people familiar with the social decorum in small noddle shops in southern Italy can easily be at a loss in how to behave or handle themselves in small noddle shops in Tainan, that is, in addition to not knowing the local language.

To give but one counter example: One major reason behind the success of multinational restaurant establishments such as McDonald's or Wendy's is the fact that they maintain a consistent and therefore readily recognizable script (e.g., the menu, the overall visual design, the physical setting, etc.) across national boundaries. A person from southern Italy or anywhere in the U.S. visiting Taiwan may not know how to behave, order food, or otherwise handle him or herself at a local noddle shop, but he sure can feel "at home" at the local McDonald's. In other words, what sells McDonald's, Wendy's, or the likes around the world so well is not the quality or variety of their food; it is the simplicity and familiarity of their social script.

So here is an important lesson to be learned. As we feel anxious when we go into social settings overseas because we are not familiar with their social script, our friends from outside of Taiwan similarly have the need to know in a relatively short period of time how they ought to behave in social settings in Taiwan that they are not familiar with. They will be most appreciative if we orient them early in our interaction the script of the social setting into which we are taking them.