The concept of a role, that is, what a role is, is very broad. It can be used in various fields, therefore, and in different meanings.
Terminology
The role can be determined in various forms.
- As a measure of significance. First of all, the concept is defined as the degree and measure of influence. In this sense, they perceive this term, asking what role a phenomenon / event / specific person plays, etc.
- As a behavioral model . This is what determines how to behave. It is established and regulated by special social norms. The role should correlate with rights and obligations. It is also assigned to the status and is its dynamic characteristic.
- Like the behavior itself. Another definition is the expected behavior of a person, depending on his social position.
- How functioning. An offshoot of the term is role-based functioning, which is another definition.
- As a social status . The social position established by relative standards and including the rights and obligations of the person who occupies this position is also an answer to the question of what is a role.
Social role
The term social role is most widely used in two sciences: directly in sociology and, in addition, in social psychology. But what is a social role? It is closely related to the status of the individual in society. Most often it is defined as a pattern of behavior. Among the tasks is to establish the interaction of various statuses in society.
The term is borrowed from the theater, in which the difference in the concepts of "actor-role" is especially sharply emphasized. What is the role in the theater - the simplest explanation and one of the most obvious. That is why it is used as an example.
The question of what a social role is always stands apart from other types of roles, for several reasons. First of all, it is easy to see that the first definition differs most sharply from the other four. It is a classic definition of a role. This means that categories such as syntactic or role in databases are repelled by it. But the category under consideration in the presented context is the quintessence of the remaining four definitions, closely related to patterns, behavior, models in society, as a dynamic structure.
Professional role as a subspecies of social
The classification of social roles involves a division into conventional and informal. In both the first and second cases, the synonym for the term in question is “template”. The only difference is how strict the framework is. For example, conventional roles are always clearer, more stable, common in all requirements, but informal can still take into account what kind of person performs them.
The professional role refers to the conventional. That is, to the question what is a professional role, one can safely answer that it is primarily social. However, this term contains not only a template for the employee’s actions, but also his rights and obligations, competencies, based on which his measure of influence in the company in which he works and in the professional sphere is determined.
Political role as a follower of the status template system
Political science, like sociology, is a social science. That is why, despite the fact that they concentrate their attention on different objects and objects of research, the relationship between them is great. The political role is not a subspecies of the social, it does not fall under the above classification, since, in essence, it directly relates to a separate science. And yet, speaking of what a political role is, one cannot help but recall the "status template" system operating in society. The society as a static structure displays the status, as dynamic - the role. The same rule applies to the political structure of society.
Political roles are characteristic of various entities with different statuses, depending on which they perform different functions and have different social significance from one another.
The political role is the expected behavior not only from the individual, but also from the group or institution. A vivid example for a graphic explanation are political parties. On the one hand, as the formation and organization they have established patterns of behavior. On the other hand, one political party may be more significant than another or others at one time or another. In other words, she will have a different political role, providing for a higher measure of significance.
Role as a concept of computer science
The word "role" is also used in computer science, for example, in the field of databases and system administration. A role is a group of privileges that are interconnected and granted to the user. Essentially, this is a method that provides convenience in regulating privileges.
Role as a syntax term
What is a word in a sentence, what role does it play in it - this is what a syntactic role is. Different parts of speech have different meanings. Therefore, the most frequently asked question is what is the syntactic role for a noun / adjective / verb, etc. In this case, we mean a measure of the significance and influence of a word of a given part of speech in a sentence.
The term in question is determined depending on the relationship with other members of the proposal. For example, a noun in relation to them can be a subject, a complement, an appeal, etc.
The decisive factor for stratification
It should be noted that the role, which, among other things, and to a greater extent, determines the measure of significance, is one of the decisive factors in stratification. Stratification, in turn, is inequality. In sociology, this is a stratification of society. Stratification involves a certain hierarchy. The wider the structure under consideration, the more difficult it will be, having many branches.
The role that the subject will occupy in this established system of relations depends on the role. For society (the subject of sociology and political science), the elite is called the highest "caste". In computer science and syntax, a different terminology, however, similar features are manifested in it. For example, in system administration there are users who are given all possible rights, and there are those who have restrictions on some of them.
Stratification usually implies the smallest elite group. Ideally, the average value should be the largest, but this is not always the case. The stratification studied by the social sciences is more dynamic than the same phenomenon in the subjects of the study of the humanities or the exact sciences.