Frames and the Interaction Order

Frame Analysis asks how participants answer the practical question of what is happening in a situation. Frames organize interpretation, while shifts, fabrications, and misunderstandings show that this organization is active and revisable.

Goffman’s interaction order names the domain of co-present conduct governed by rituals, attention, bodily cues, and mutual vulnerability. He treated this domain as connected to, but analytically distinct from, large institutions.