The Image of Alcohol Use in Country Music Essay -- Songs Singing Media

The Image of alcoholic drink Use in Country Music The relative presence or absence of clear norms prescribing certain kinds of alcohol enjoyment has long been regarded as a key factor in rates of alcoholism (e.g., 1, 2). In societies where it is expected that drinking will be use as a means to facilitate certain kinds of behavior or to assuage problems the relative incidence of alcohol problems is much higher than in those where expectations are that it be used for ceremonial functions (3).The purpose of the present study was to examine the current stick out of alcohol use in region practice of medicine, an element of American democratic culture in which alcohol use and misuse has long been a major theme (4, 5). In country music the simple exemplar and real values of the southern and southwestern regions of the United States, as tumesce as middle-America generally, are explicitly stated. The lyrics affirm a simple and functional classes and by those whose class origins are i n these two groups. Therefore, analysis of much(prenominal) lyrical expressions provides an opportunity to explore values common to large segments of the population.We hypothesized (1) that country music would reflect a high degree of ambivalence concerning the use of alcohol, wavering between an sublime value and a real one, and (2) that it would conjure up or prescribe the use of alcohol for the facilitation or assuagement.While the ideal values of monastic order, particularly the agrarian society from which country music stems, guide to portray drinking as evil, the lyrics also extol its use. Adhering to the handed-down fundamentalist view of alcohol as a tool of blessed temptation (6), the ideal view condemns the use of alcohol. The real values, however, are sooner different Drinking is seen as related to manhood... ... Two particular attitudes were instal (1) highly ambivalent feelings toward alcohol use and (2) the promotion of drinking for the pastime of facilitatio n and assuagement.These two themes are clearly related to a large dust of literature on the relationship between societal attitudes toward drinking and the conception of alcohol problems. Fallding (3), for instance, demonstrated the potential destructiveness of drinking patterns based on ambivalent attitudes and the use of alcohol as a problem-solving mechanism. The presence of these themes in a grass roots expression of attitudes much(prenominal) as country music is an indication of their depth in the American social milieu. American society has no clear consistent drinking pattern, and, assuming that the values and attitudes uttered in these songs reflect basic attitudes, is not likely to develop such a set of norms.