Music plays an important role in the lives of individuals and often reflects important societal values. Music can also serve as an important reflection of the publics current opinion at a given point in time. Patriotism is a feeling of love for ones homeland and has often been the subject matter of music lyrics throughout history.
In particular, country music has been perceived as being an especially patriotic genre of music. This thesis utilized quantitative and qualitative content analyses as the methods to examine the patriotic content of country music lyrics over the past decade. The sample was adapted from Billboards year-end Hot Country Songs chart.
Nearly 40% of the sample conveyed patriotic themes. The majority of these songs expressed blind patriotism, or unquestioning support of America. The songs that exuded patriotism were categorized into one of four themes: songs about terrorist attacks, wartime and the armed forces; songs about the American dream; songs about current events in America; and songs celebrating American life.
Additionally, the songs about terrorism, wartime, and the armed forces experienced a shift in tone throughout the decade. The beginning of the time period contained songs that were overtly pro-America and pro-war, the middle of the decade included songs that were much softer and focused on the soldiers lives rather than the actual war, and lastly, the end of the decade contained songs that told stories of wartime casualties that many families were experiencing first handedly.
This study illustrates that country musics narrative and story-like lyrics have captured the patriotic feelings experienced by many people throughout the past decade. These songs collectively provided a snapshot of the opinions and values of society throughout the past decade.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-04252011-224457 |
| Date | 26 April 2011 |
| Creators | Carville, Claire S. |
| Contributors | Popp, Richard, Mann, Robert, Lundy, Lisa |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-04252011-224457/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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