Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Ordinary Troubles

In everyday life, the social interactions of individuals are frequently disturbed by unexpected occurrences. These occurrences are outside of the expected of what normally fits within a specific social situation. Erving Goffman has developed the concept of ordinary troubles as a part of his frame analysis—the analysis of the specific arrangements of individual involvements in social interactions. The frame is the context in which social activities are constituted and assigned a specific meaning; it is an interpretation that allows the individual to categorize and to understand a situation and its sense. People try to integrate each situation into what they have already experienced in similar situations. This happens unconsciously, until troubles take place.

These troubles occur in everyday life situations. Ordinary troubles are not caused by conscious activities and not with the aim to generate a false impression of what goes on; instead, ordinary troubles are grounded in mistakes and preclude somebody from doing something in a direct way. Because they differ from intended and fraudulent fabrications, Goffman conceptualized these kinds of troubles as ordinary. They arise from reasons such as ambiguity or framing errors.

Conceptual Overview and Discussion

Ambiguity

Ambiguity emerges when participants of social interactions are, for a lesser or a longer time, in doubt about what is going on and about how they should define the situation. Therefore, an unam-biguousness perplexity occurs for them. As a consequence, feelings of insecurity arise, and activities are undertaken only with hesitation. Often, ambiguity has to be cleared up by a specialist who can identify its reasons, for example, if an abrupt turnoff of the lights is caused by a power breakdown. Ambiguity has two forms: (1) what can happen in general (vagueness) and (2) which one of a number of definable possibilities happens (uncertainty). For instance, if abrupt silence occurs during a telephone conversation, the reason for it is vague for the caller; it could be that the reception is technically disturbed, that the phone partner is offended by something, that he or she has may have suffered a sudden heart attack or perhaps has accidentally hung up. However, such a situation and its ambiguity have to be cleared immediately, and the reason for the silence has to be discovered. This is because each of these possibilities requires different behaviors of the caller to meet the situation.

With transformations of the frame, when the proposed frame does not fit with the common activities, ambiguity occurs. Ambiguities can take place in what Goffman has conceptualized as keying (e.g., if it is dubious whether one hears the right phone ring or just a ring in the television) and in fabrications (e.g., a common skepticism about the real intentions of one's activities). Skepticism can occur with regard to the possibility that something is caused by a harmless prank. Such a suspicion can often be based on accidental events. Skepticism also can occur when biographic reasoned events, such as former encounters with a nodding acquaintance are forgotten, but the forgotten acquaintance welcomes one by one's personal name.

Framing Errors

In contrast to ambiguities, Erving Goffman discussed framing errors as caused in nonmanipulated but inaccurate understanding on the configuration of current occurrences. This leads to behaviors executed on the basis of false evaluations of the situation that are the result of systematic framing errors. These errors are based on failures to correctly interpret the frame. Goffman differentiated four types of framing errors depending on their relation to the frame. First, errors can occur with reference to the primary framework by unconscious activities fitting within the expected frame. Here, activities that are based on a misinterpretation of the frame lead to a dissonance between the activities and the frame. Second, errors can happen during the process of keying. Keying is the process by which activities, which are meaningful in a primary framework, are transformed into something patterned for this activity but are seen by the participants as something different. For example, if one unwittingly wanders into a location where a film (i.e., motion picture) is being shot, then one might perceive the performance as reality, and this mis-perception can lead one to engage in strange activities that fit within the assumed reality but not outside the film location. Third, errors can take place with regard to biographic identification, like the confusion in identity recognition. Fourth, framing errors happen in different channels of the frame. For example, this can take place in the channel of articulation, when one speaks while thinking the microphone is turned off and the audience hears something that was not intended to be heard.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution