Acevedo, Darien (2005)
A Critical View of Robert Landy’s Taxonomy of Roles from a Hispanic American Perspective
Abstract: This research examines the Hispanic-American dramatic literature of the twentieth century to find roles that represent the Hispanic American culture. These roles are then compared to the roles listed in Robert Landy’s Taxonomy of Roles to find similarities and differences in meaning. Using Landy’s (1993) method of work, I chose prominent plays from the Hispanic-American dramatic literature of the twentieth century. In this literature I searched for roles that were repeated throughout the twentieth century and across countries. I described these roles, using the same structure used by Landy (1993), in terms of quality, the characteristics of each role, and function, the purpose of each role. For each role I give an example with name of character, title of play, author, country and year of publication. I compare these descriptions to those given by Landy (1993) and note similarities and differences. I concluded that there are differences in interpretation between Landy and myself, which are important for therapists to note in order to be sensitive to cultural differences when assessing and treating individuals.