ABSTRACT
Throughout history, humankind has utilized both oral and written communications to transmit feelings of love and hate, to preserve documents of public significance and ideas of personal value, and to provide individuals and groups with resources for examining themselves and their predecessors. Both songs and books are central to historical investigation. We live at a time when different mediums of communication (radio, television, and motion pictures) dramatically affect, and in some cases even become, intellectual messages. Writers like Marshall McLuhan have speculated that the human senses, of which all media are merely extensions, function to configure the awareness and the experiences of each of us. Thus, the products of modern electronic technology frequently become the content of learning and understanding during late—twentiethcentury America. When one medium of communication either comments on or draws its imagery from another medium, the perception of individuals is broadened by both the technology and the mediated thought. The ability of human beings to conceive and interpret ideas, issues, and problems through films, newspapers, magazines, radio programs, and television shows is often illustrated in popular—song lyrics.
