The Language of Drag - Einzelansicht

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In this research seminar we will examine linguistic markers and communicative practices of drag queens as portrayed within the reality TV show ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ and ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’. Based on a purpose-built corpus of several episodes/seasons of the show from two (mainly) ENL contexts, we will identify linguistic features on the morpho-syntactic, lexical and pragmatic levels that are utilised in the linguistic construction of drag identity. We will then ponder the question of whether the features used are variety-specific or whether they could be indicative of a more global phenomenon of gendered language use. Please note: This is an advanced seminar in research-based linguistics. Ideally participants should already have experiences in linguistic data transcription and corpus-based research or, realistically, they should at least have an above-average interest in applying these methods to questions of identity construction.