Erving Goffman’s scientific contributions

... The significance of in-person openings cannot be overstated. In addition to enabling participants to establish the nature of the encounter and its organization-what will be done and/or talked about, in what order (Pillet-Shore, 2018a:214-215), copresent openings are a locus for: managing interpersonal access (e.g., ratifying or denying a face engagement; Goffman, 1963;1971), accomplishing presence validation and threat denial (Youssouf, Grimshaw & Bird, 1976), displaying (un)availability for collaborative action (Goffman, 1963;Robinson, 1998), meeting new people (Pillet-Shore, 2011), monitoring for and establishing joint attention on diverse and distributed manifestations of the self (e.g., how persons look, smell, and sound; Pillet-Shore, 2021), including or excluding newcomers (Corsaro, 1979;Pillet-Shore, 2010), and displaying how one is doing/feeling at the start of an interaction (Pillet-Shore, 2018b). Holistically, participants use the in-person opening phase to display a stance toward-and thereby actively (re)constitute-their social relationship on-the-spot and in-the-moment through the choices they make about how they design their social actions for one another (Pillet-Shore, 2006;2008;2011;2012;2018a;2018b;2021). ...

Reference:

'Routines' and 'Formulaic Language' in Conversation Analysis