Deck 4: Social Structure and Interaction in Everyday Life

Question 1

Think of a person you know well who often irritates you or whose behavior grates on your nerves (it could be a parent, friend, relative, teacher). First, list that person's statuses and roles. Then analyze the person's possible role expectations, role performance, role conflicts, and role strains. Does anything you find in your analysis help to explain the irritating behavior? How helpful are the concepts of social structure in analyzing individual behavior?

Answer 1

The irritating person is a relative of the sociology student. The person is married with two children, and holds a position in the family organization meant for charity. The exuberant smile of the person in combination with social clumsiness actually creates annoyance. Once, the person disclosed that the position of managing trustee held by him in the family organization is just an abstemious one. He doesn't neither take any decisions nor engage in any of the developmental activities.
As per the analysis of the person, his occupational and class status is of lower grade. The role ascribed to him as managing trustee of the family organization, is under performed and many role conflicts are evident in the responses to the serious issues of the organization. However, the person apparently does not have any role strain, because there is no attempt from his side to improve the role performance.
The concepts of the social structure are very helpful not only in the analysis of social situations, but also in identifying the remedies of the social problems.

Question 2

You are conducting field research on gender differences in nonverbal communication styles. How are you going to account for variations among age, race, and social class?

Answer 2

Nonverbal communication is the transfer of message to another person without the use of words. The channels of nonverbal communications include facial expressions, gestures, postures, eye contact, Para-language, managing personal space, etc..
Studying non-verbal communication in a field setting is challenging. Exploring the factors such as age, race and social class that can affect the nonverbal communication may be recorded using the following tables. The descriptions and the frequencies of the nonverbal behavior may be represented in the tables.
The researcher may record the observations and descriptions about the non verbal communication in the appropriate place in the tables.

Question 3

When communicating with other genders, races, and ages, is it better to express and acknowledge different styles or to develop a common, uniform style?

Answer 3

Adapting communication styles to match the recipients' characteristics such as gender, age, race, etc. is always beneficial. Choosing word choices, message length, non verbal components, intensity, and media to match the needs of the receiver is always assumed to be advantageous. However, in certain situations and contexts common style of communication is better.
For example public address communications in airports, railway stations, etc. may follow common ways of communication to all people.
When educating the public about specific hygiene, environmental sustainability, community policing, etc. adaptive communications can be highly helpful.