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7 - Dolly Parton’s love lexicon: detection of motifs in cultural texts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2014

Yair Neuman
Yair Neuman
Affiliation:
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel
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Summary

Dolly Parton is one of the most famous singers in the USA and is known as the queen of country music. She is well known not only because of her songs but also through her unique physical appearance: her feminine aspects are grotesquely overemphasized, the most salient of them being her huge (artificial) breasts and lips.

One of Parton’s albums, released in 1974, is titled Love Is Like a Butterfly after one of the album’s songs. The first lines of the song, written by Parton herself, go like this:

  1. Love is like a butterfly

  2. As soft and gentle as a sigh

  3. The multicolored moods of love are like its satin wings

If we carefully analyze the song, we may identify words and phrases describing or associated with the experience of love: soft, gentle, sigh, multicolored, satin, wings, heart, feel, strange, inside, flutters, flight, rare, with me, kiss me, touch, warm, tender, with you, laughter, bring me, sunshine, spring, happy, by my side, precious, share, sweet, together, belong, daf odils, butterfly.

From this list I have chosen fifteen words as best representing this experience: soft, gentle, sigh, wings, inside, rare, touch, warm, tender, sunshine, spring, happy, precious, sweet, together. I call this list Dolly Parton’s love lexicon.

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Introduction to Computational Cultural Psychology , pp. 118 - 125
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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