The Frames of Group Culture: Moments and Their Teams

Abstract

Erving Goffman's most profound and theoretically dense work, Frame Analysis, first published in 1974, is now fifty years old: an iconic linkage of the micro and macro‐level. In this reassessment after half a century, I connect Goffman's phenomenological analysis with the meso‐level study of groups and meaning within tiny publics. Frames are inevitably connected with local cultures. In making this claim, I draw upon group‐based conventions of the proper use of profanity, the dynamics of in‐group joking, and the workings of deceptive teamwork. I conclude that there is no single set of frames, keys, and laminations, but all are based within communities of action.