Abstract
AbstractReadingis a unique interactional practice in the drag queen community. It refers to leveling witty and often cutthroat mock insults at fellow drag queens, with an aim ofthrowing shade. In this paper, I examine the discourse of the ‘reading challenge’, a staple ofRuPaul’s Drag Race(RPDR), an internationally popular drag queen reality TV show (2009–). In the first part, I review central concepts surrounding drag performance and the phenomenon ofRPDRand summarize relevant sociolinguistic literature about drag queen speech and the practice ofreading. In the second part, I describe theRPDR reading challengeas a unique discursive genre and analyse its performative structure, themes, and most prominent strategies that queens use to construct felicitous reads and throw shade. The analysis demonstrates that this genre relies on camp language and highly ritualized, repetitive, and recontextualized performance of reading, framed by requirements of mass-consumed reality TV.
Publisher
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Subject
Linguistics and Language,Anthropology,Language and Linguistics,Gender Studies
Reference38 articles.
1. Introduction
2. Dragging with an accent: Linguistic stereotypes, language barriers and translingualism;Anthony,2014
3. Markedness and style switching in performances by African American drag queens;Barrett,1998
4. Indexing polyphonous identity in the speech of African American drag queens;Barrett,1999
5. Supermodels of the world, unite! Political economy and the language of performance among African American drag queens;Barrett,2006 [1995]