Social and Personal Connections in Wine Drinking Culture: Emotive Diversity and Social Practices
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The depiction of alcohol and the act of drinking in artistic images is a common feature of literary works. This is indicative of the high social significance of alcoholic beverages in human life. The process of mastering these images by secular literature of the modern era was preceded by the appearance of alcohol in folklore and in Old Russian literature, where they were metaphorically interpreted under the influence of ritual and everyday experience. The images of beer, wine, and vodka that have emerged are imbued with a distinctive emotional quality and communicative significance. The genesis and metaphorisation of images of these drinks elucidate the distinction between the presence or absence of a particular beverage in a literary work. The process of metaphorisation is based on the communicative function of ritual alcohol. The methods of social topology, which consider the individual as a social entity and human interaction with objects as the formation of social space, permit the view that alcohol can be regarded as a mode of social interaction. Beer, wine, and vodka are the agents of this contact, facilitating diverse forms of communication and resulting in a range of outcomes. An examination of the historical development of alcohol consumption and its perceived ceremonial properties through the lens of social topology reveals how the characteristics of the context and occasion of drinking beer, wine, and vodka indicate various connections. Since antiquity, the ceremonial consumption of beer (mead) has been associated with the strengthening of kinship between drinkers, the equalisation and inclusion of individuals within a group, and the binding of social interactions to a specific national Christian calendar of holidays or social necessity. The reason and measure of consumption were limited by rituals of handling the cup. The consumption of grape wine in Russia indicated a high social status, typically associated with rulers such as tsars or princes, or diplomats. Grape wine acquired a sacred meaning, symbolising the blood of Christ, and connected believers with God through the ritual of the Eucharist. The semantic field of religion also encompassed secular wines. Vodka had a prototype in the form of bread wine, a strong drink obtained by distillation and used in taverns since the fifteenth century. The advent of this type of alcohol and the subsequent tax policy of taverns effectively destroyed the conditions required for ritual alcohol consumption. This resulted in a shift in the nature of the connection, whereby the ritual of “food kinship” was replaced by a more transient form of friendship for profit. An analysis of folklore texts from a handwritten songbook from the nineteenth century reveals that the use of these drinks as metaphors for human relations is based on the actor properties of drinking beer, wine and vodka. For example, good beer is associated with love, while bad beer is associated with dislike. The mention of vodka is indicative of a negative connotation.
Source: Quaestio Rossica
Author: Alena Kalinina
Institution: Ural Federal University
Language: English
Subfield: General Arts and Humanities
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4405822249