status

status

Law the legal standing or condition of a person

Collins Discovery Encyclopedia, 1st edition © HarperCollins Publishers 2005

status

1. any stable position within a social system associated with specific expectations, rights and duties. 'Status’ in this sense is equivalent to ROLE, although it is the latter term which has the wider currency.
2. the positive or negative honour, prestige, power, etc., attaching to a position, or an individual person, within a system of SOCIAL STRATIFICATION (often referred to as social status).

Both conceptions derive from forms of society in which individual social locations were relatively fixed (see ASCRIBED STATUS, MAINE), for example by religion or by law (see CASTE, ESTATE). In modern societies status positions tend to be more fluid. See also STATUS GROUP, CLASS, STATUS AND PARTY, SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS, STATUS CONSISTENCY AND INCONSISTENCY.

Collins Dictionary of Sociology, 3rd ed. © HarperCollins Publishers 2000

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Status

 

in the Hamito-Semitic languages, a grammatical category of the noun that determines whether the noun is definite and whether it has a relationship with other parts of the sentence; in particular, whether the noun has a genitival attribute. A noun’s status also indicates possession, as in Arabic - i(”my”), and demonstrativeness, as in Somali -k-an (”this,” masculine) and -t-an (”this,” feminine). The category of status exists in the Semitic, Coptic, Berber, Cushitic and Chad languages. It is expressed by means of suffixes, prefixes, internal inflection, and distinctions in declensional paradigms.

REFERENCES

D’iakonov, I. M. Semito-khamitskie iazyki. Moscow, 1965.
Tucker, A. N., and M. A. Bryan. The Non-Bantu Languages ofNorth-Eastern Africa. London, 1966.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.