Erving Goffman:  Best known for his book “The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life”, Goffman is a symbolic interactionist, and the originator of the dramaturgical perspective in sociology.  The Presentation of Self… builds upon the work of Cooley and Mead, taking as its point of departure the postulate that our primary concern is with how others perceive us.  Thus, social life requires an unending end of ‘performances’.  Goffman dissects the rituals of daily interaction, including the moral obligations on the audience, the role of secrets, and discrepancies between the impression one is trying to manage and impression one gives off.  (These interactions are—and must be---considered in their context-specific situation.)  In a later work, Stigma, Goffman takes up the theme of individuals who are unable to manage their social identity.  In both works, Goffman posits that our overwhelming desire to ‘save face’ underpins our social dances, and functions, in fact, as a ‘social glue’ of sorts.  Our inability to save face in instances of RA is directly related to his work.

The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life

Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity

Interaction Ritual - Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior”

Further advance of these theories is to be found in

 Interaction Ritual Chains (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology)—Randall Collins