Role


 * Essentials of role **
 * By Jeremy Huang **

Imagine, you are watching a stage show. Everything of the show runs perfectly, however suddenly, an actor comes out with wrong finery, inappropriate background music and embarrassing silence. The show is not successful at all now even though everyone else plays well; the actor just ruined the show, for his failure to play his own role. Indeed, as time goes, although the definition has dissimilated a lot from its origin, role always has a remarkable influence on people’s lives, and more significantly, molding the behavior standard of human beings and helping establish numerous of great groups. Role, in 1538, first appeared as the Middle French word roule, holding the meaning as function performed by someone or something in an event or process. However, at that period, people only accepted the word for its theatrical use, Back then, it also means a character assigned to or represented by an actor in a play, film, etc., which was specifically used to be represented by actors. As a result of it, plenty of distinct roles come out. For example, protagonists are people who occupy the majority of a play or film while cameos aim at illuminating those leading men. Actually, not only characters, but the words spoken by actors and the printed or written copies of these also, can be specified by role, in orderto intensify its on-stage usage. As being widely used in people’s life, role gradually generalized to have metaphor meanings, involving other parts that were off-stage in. For instance, Byron, in his book Don Juan: Canto XVI, stated that Juan, cast a glance on Adeline while playing her grand role (OED) while A. Bennett also used role to describe his character’s allotted share, part or duty in life and society (OED) in his novel The Plain Man and His Wife (1913). Moreover, the word has begun to be used by social scientists, especially in a psychological way since its first written record appeared in 1893, as Stanley Hall said in Amer. Jrnl. Psychol ‘her moral nature, the role she plays and the role she could play in society.’(OED) Furthermore, the word is prevailing in both English speaking countries and eastern countries such as China, but with slight difference. When the word ‘role’ was translated into Chinese, it actually consisted of only two characters instead of four in English. These two characters possess completely dissimilar meanings, while the first one ‘jue’ means a type of role in the Chinese traditional drama and the second one ‘se’ represents different sorts. And when we place them together as an entire word ‘jue se’, it holds the original meaning of roles in plays or films, just as the combination meaning of two characters. Interestingly, as the word role became more common in China, it developed additional off-stage meanings, which is similar to the development of role’s definition in English speaking countries.  Basically, the word definition’s substantial change from On-stage into human’s daily life can be related to people’s more spiritual comprehending of the word itself rather than before. Life is like a drama; various roles appeared on it; those roles actually become the intermediaries for people to associate with each other, and specifically enact the standard of behavior patterns that its corresponding role should follow. The Aircraft Cockpit Crew is a wonderful instance of that. Composing of several dissimilar roles, the new-formed crew perfectly completed their 4-day flight task without any conspicuous mistake. Lots of reason can be contributed to the groups’ success, but the most crucial one is that every member in the crew is familiar with what he/she should do in his/her certain role; this is what leads the group into highly efficiency and cohesiveness. Understanding the significances and values of role can also help people build a greater and more successful group; this has been proved ideally in a multiple online battle game called League of Legends, which, in one specific game, has two opposing teams while each team, or in other words, group, consists of five individuals. Each member performs a different, yet detailed role, in order to defeat the other team. Five seemingly independent roles are supposed to cooperate as an entire cohesive group to ensure the positive chemistry of their group; this is indeed difficult to do because every one must figure out the relationship and balance between his/her personal role and sake of group. During the game, if an Attack Damage Carry, one of the five roles which is regarded as the group’s core for its greatest damages to his enemies among all five roles, only focused on how to farm more money on his own behalf, but failed to attend any of the team fight, without a doubt that his group will lose those fights and at last founder the whole match, for his all time absences. The winning teams are always groups that have members who are able to perform their roles well and positively and actively contribute to the group; sometimes even sacrificing themselves, for the eventual triumph of group. Throughout the history, though the meaning of role changed a lot, from its original On-stage definition to the derivative off-stage definition, the importance of this word never changed. Not only because it can mold a standard for people’s behavior, but also inasmuch as its values indeed help to establish Great Groups on all human beings’ behalf. Every group will be disbanded some day, however, the influence that role enact on human, will never lose its weight.

 Reference Role [Def. 1]. (n.d.). In OED. Retrieved September 27, 2013, from [|http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/166971?rskey=PsxDAN&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid] Role [Def. 2]. (n.d.). In OED. Retrieved September 27, 2013, from [|http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/166971?rskey=PsxDAN&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid] Role [Def. 4]. (n.d.). In OED. Retrieved September 27, 2013, from [|http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/166971?rskey=PsxDAN&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid] Part [Def. 12]. (n.d.). In OED. Retrieved September 27, 2013, from [|http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/138188#eid32050528] Ginnett, R. C. (1990). Airline Cockpit Crew. 