Performance and Persona: Goffman and Jung's approaches to professional identity applied to public relations

Highlights

• Public relations negotiate professional and individual practitioner identity.

• Goffman observes ‘microsociology’ of identity formation as performance.

• Jung claims outward identity can marginalise inner needs.

• Such needs form hidden ‘underbelly’ or ‘backstage’ of identity.

• Together, they offer insights into PR's individual and collective identity.

Abstract

Public relations work involves shaping, reflecting and communicating identity for organisations and individuals, and is in turn shaped by the professional identity both of the field and individual public relations practitioners. This paper explores these issues from the dual perspectives of sociologist Erving Goffman's (1922–1982) reflections on the performance of work and Carl Jung's (1875–1961) concept of Persona, the socially acceptable face of the individual or group. The former explores these issues through observation of external behaviours, the latter by engaging with the psyche. Goffman and Jung, despite their conflicting worldviews, offer a complementary understanding of the operation, internal and external, of professional identity.

The paper, which is conceptual and interpretive, with the objective of building theory, summarises contemporary approaches to professional identity in public relations and other fields, before introducing Goffman, who is often mentioned in this context, and Jung, who is not. Together these two scholars offer insights into the interior and exterior aspects of identity, which is here applied to public relations, raising questions both about the production of identity as a commodity for others and the production of self-image of public relations practitioners. The introduction of Jungian thinking brings the inward or experiential dimension of professional identity to this debate.

Introduction

Public relations is engaged with issues of identity as (a) a commodity created for clients and employers; (b) its own ‘contested terrain’ as a field; and (c) the professional identity of practitioners. The first of these is central to practice, given “the public relations activity of large organisations today … is identity-related in that each organisation must work to establish its unique ‘self’ while connecting its concerns to those of the ‘cultural crowd”’ (Cheney & Christensen, 2001a, p. 234). Others have engaged with the production of organisational symbols and discursive identity (Grunig, 1993, Mickey, 2003, Roper, 2005) and the creation of identities for individuals (Motion, 1999). The identity of the field (b) has been explored as a jurisdictional issue (Hutton, 1999, Hutton, 2001, Hutton, 2010), a ‘contested terrain’ (Cheney & Christensen, 2001b), and more recently as an argument for a public relations identity as a social practice in a complex society, centrally involved in concepts such as trust and legitimacy and issues of power and language, to be investigated from a constructivist perspective (Ihlen & Verhoeven, 2012). This continues and develops discussions about the paradigms that shape its research and self-understanding (Curtin, 2012, Edwards, 2012, Pieczka, 1996). There has been debate around the content of identity for public relations practitioners: for example whether practitioners see themselves as ethical guardians or advocates (Baker, 2008, Bowen, 2008). Literature concerning roles (White and Dozier, 1992, Zerfass et al., 2013) could also be grouped under the heading of identity and others have explored how practitioners identify or distance themselves from public relations as a profession (Jeffrey & Brunton, 2012). Less scrutinised is the means by which professional identity in public relations practitioners, both collectively and individually, is produced. One exception is Edwards’ (2010) use of Bourdieu to articulate how PR identity is gendered and racially defined; another is Curtin and Gaither, 2005, Curtin and Gaither, 2007 use of the circuit of culture (see below) to examine public relations identity as one element in a dynamic set of fluctuating relationships. This paper considers literature regarding the production and maintenance of professional identity, then examines two, apparently incompatible, approaches to such work, before returning to public relations theory and practice in the concluding remarks.