The Daily Improviser Meets the Daily Script

"You can observe a lot by watching!" - Yogi Berra

Last time, I revealed my concerns about whether we can really attain a state of mastery, in the sense of being able to purge everything between us and the thing we’re dealing with. Can we attain this state – and must we in order to perform at our best?

An article I recently encountered – “The Improvisational Performance of Everyday Life,” by Dr. R. Keith Sawyer – may shed some light on these questions. Sawyer cites the work of the sociologist Erving Goffman, the author of the seminal book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. In that book, Goffman contended that our daily interactions (or “performances”), far from being spontaneous and unstructured, are in fact highly constrained by the “scripts” we learn from our culture. Examples include the “Telephone Script” (the words we use to conduct a telephone conversation) and the “Restaurant Script” (the words we use to interact with a server).

Clearly, Goffman would say, we are not blank slates upon which meaning is newly composed with each interaction.

In addition, Sawyer cites other authorities who note that most of our daily interactions are highly indexical, that is, our communications indicate something that isn’t contained in the literal meaning of the words we use. Our conversation is loaded with catchphrases, clichés, inflections, and accents that convey something about our attitudes and expectations (shades of the subtexts I described in an earlier article). In a comment that calls to mind the above-cited Yogiism, Sawyer says:

“Some linguists estimate that as much as 90% of all of our spoken language is at least partially indexical – in other words, very little of what we say is context-free.”

So, according to Goffman and the other researchers, not only do we continually apply pre-set scripts in our interactions, but we convey meaning in other ways that prevent others from interpreting those scripts literally.

So much for mastery, then. All of these recycled scripts with subtextual meanings would seem to constitute heaps of stuff that interfere with our attaining that elusive “nothing between” state.

But Sawyer then proposes that a new paradigm, based on improv theory and practice, be overlaid on Goffman’s script theory. Does that mean that the Daily Improviser should literally become a performance improviser in everyday life, making up everything new on the spot based on exactly what’s in front of him at the moment?

[This is the point in the Blog Script where the author says: Stay tuned!]