4 December 2012

Drag Queen’s English: Paris Flame On


Paris is Burning – the 1990 documentary about the Golden Age of drag balls in New York City – premiered here last week. Besides depicting the atmosphere of the underground drag balls of New York City, Paris is Burning presents peculiarities of the English used by the queens. Such language peculiarities – which characterises the distinctiveness of the Drag Queens English – could remain restricted to a small social group and maybe end up falling into obscurity if the mainstream public worldwide didn’t have a chance to observe them in RuPauls Drag Race.
Interior Illusions Lounge (where the girls Untuck)

Watching Paris is Burning we instantly recognise many of the words and phrases used by RuPaul and the queens in RPDRace. For the international public, as I believe, many of these peculiarities pass them by or, when we notice them, we don’t really fully realise their meaning. So, in this post, I made a glossary of some distinctive words and phrases from Paris is Burning that frequently occur in RPDRace.
Werk it!, an expression of praise;
Gag, lose speech or breath in jealousy or amazement; used as imperative in phrases like “Gag on my eleganza!”
Nerve, audacity.
Cheesecake, showing some skin and posing with glamour. In Paris is Burning, a judge of the ball competion says: "That means you must not only have a body, but you must be sexy."
Fierce, be extraordinarily excellent; in RPDRace (s01, e05), Nina Flowers reveals her awareness of the distinct meaning that fierce has in the drag English: “Ru comes into the room with these fierce girls. Not ‘fierce’ like like drag fierce, like fierce, like they they looked threatening.”
Shady, being mean and contemptuous; from shade (see post 04).
Hunty, used with an ironic tone at the end of phrases, apparently as a substitute for hunny – variant pronunciation of honey used as an affectionate form of address.
Legendary  children, or just Legendary, the queens who made name in the drag balls competitions;
Category is... a reference to categories that contestants compete for in the drag balls. RPDRace's contestants refered to Dida Ritz, from season 4, using the catchphrase: "The category is... cheesecake!"
House, a gay street gang, named after ball walkers who became known for winning; each house has a Mother (and a Father in some cases) who is the leader, the queen whom the house members look up to.  Pepper LaBeija, mother of the House of LaBeiJa, also refers to house as family. “They’re family… This is a new meaning of family… It’s a question of a group of human beings, in a mutual bond” That’s how queens come to call each other Sisters.
Houses featured in Paris is Burning
Other formulaic sentences heard in Paris is Burn and used by RuPaul frequently are:
Learn it. And learn it well.
Shake the dice. Steal the rice. This is how RuPaul usually introduces Santino Rice who is staple judge in RPDRace.
Touch this skin, darling. Touch this skin, hunny. Touch all of this skin, ok? Quite a catchphrase used in RPDRace. It appears in Paris is Burning and it’s Venus Xtravaganza who seems to have created it.
Venus says: “Now, you wanna talk about reading? Let’s talk about reading. What’s wrong with you Pedro? You’re going through it? You’re going through it some kind of psychological change in your life? Oh, you want back to being a man. Touch this skin, darling. Touch this skin hunny. Touch all of this skin, ok. You just can’t take it. You’re just an overgrown orang-utan.”
Venuz Xtravaganza in Paris is Burning

Queens around the word, truly proficient in Drag Queens English, feel free to comment (reading welcome) and correct me on the meaning of such words and phrases.
For the visits and support, a big time Thanks.

24 November 2012

Drag Queen’s English: Vogue


Leeds (Lower Briggate)_Queen's Court
Vogue is a well known word nowadays. Its meaning has been bent in the 80’s and assumed a new (modern) position – position which is now depicted in formal dictionaries and in the general consciousness of the Western World. Being a non-English speaker, far removed from the cultural setting from where the modern meaning of vogue sprung, I didn’t understand what such word meant when I first heard Madonna’s hit Vogue.
The only person who managed to make me understand the meaning of vogue was my first ‘serious’ boyfriend. Two factors singled him out from our regular hang out group as the person who had a better insight of the new meaning of vogue: he performed as a drag queen, impersonating Madonna, and had a reasonable knowledge of the American pop gay culture.
“Vogue is this…” He began explaining and, instead of using words, he started contorting his arms around his body, assuming a close-up pose with each movement.
Vogue music video

The Concise OED defines vogue as “the prevailing fashion or style at a particular time.” OED still highlights that vogue is often used in the phrase ‘in/out of vogue’ and shows that vogue entered into English in the 16th Century, from French and Italian voga ‘rowing, fashion’. As a verb, however, OED defines vogue with its modern meaning: “dance to music in a way that imitates the poses struck by a model on a catwalk.” No further detail on this meaning is given.
Happily, the Queen Mother RuPaul, in season one of RuPauls Drag Race, mentioned the origins of the modern meaning of vogue. “Vogue was introduced to the world in the cult classic Paris is Burning. And, of course, the mainstream learned about voguing from another queen; name: Madonna…”
RuPaul's Drag Race, s. 01 ep. 06_Mini-Challenge: Vogue Off


It’s during the mini-challenge, a vogue off, that RuPaul further evidences that the features of his eccentric English are not simply idiosyncratic but they actually echo the English of a whole social subgroup. There are two ways of being introduced to the roots of RuPaul’s Drag Queens English: by travelling back to the Golden Age of drag balls during the 80’s in New York City, or by watching Paris is Burning. Watching this documentary, directed by Jennie Livingston, can also make one grasp how the word vogue was deviated from its traditional sense in English.
We start to grasp the germ of such deviation when a drag queen named Dorian Corey explains the distinction between Shade and Reading: “Shade came from reading. Reading came first. Reading is the real art form of insult. You get in a good crack and everyone laughs because you found a flaw and exaggerated it. We talk about your ridiculous shape, your saggy face, your tacky clothes. Then Reading became a more developed form; where it became shade.”
Shade, if I really understood, is a subtler form of reading – though I have the impression that these words are sometimes used as synonyms. It’s by understanding the sense of shade, that we can understand the meaning of Voguing. This is what the choreographer Willi Ninja explains. “Voguing came from shade because it was a dance that two people do because they didn’t like each other. Instead of fighting, you would dance it out on the dance floor and whoever did the better moves was throwing the best shade, basically. It’s the same thing as taking knives and cutting each other up, but through a dance form. So voguing is like a safe form of throwing shade.”
Finally, Willi Ninja helps us to understand how the verb vogue proceeds from voguing. “The name is taken from the magazine Vogue, because some of the movements of the dance are also the same as the poses inside the magazine.”
Vogue seems to have the characteristics of a slang term; it’s a word restricted to a particular social group and context, and it also can be paralleled to reading and throwing shade. Yet, OED doesn’t label vogue as slang. It’s patent that vogue, with its modern meaning, just became mainstream English. And that evidences that there’s only a thin line that distinguishes strangeness and Standard when it comes to language (English, if you will).

16 November 2012

Drag Queen’s English


The term Queens English, as defined in the Concise OED, refers to “the English language as correctly written and spoken in Britain”. Everybody knows that the Queen of England, since 1952, is Elizabeth II. Not all people, however, are familiar with the Queen of the United States, Her Majesty RuPaul. And like a Queen Midas, RuPaul has an ability to turn everything that she touches into drag, including English. In his reality tv series, RuPauls Drag Race (Logo), RuPaul has presented the audience with a peculiar facet of English – an English that greatly characterise the essence of linguistic strangeness, an English that I call Drag Queens English.

Although the host (RuPaul) of Rupauls Drag Race essentially speaks American English, it’s the way he bend some rules and depart from the norms of language that dresses English up in drag – or, as RuPaul probably would say, dragulates the English.

Since the features of linguistic strangeness from Drag Queen’s English are many – and I intend to explore them in future posts – this post is limited to show how RuPaul dragulates vocabulary.


In season one, RuPaul seemed quite shy to dragulate vocabulary. The most common feature of dragulation is applied to the third person pronoun He / Him. She / Her are used instead, by Rupaul, the contestants, judges, and most guests, to address both contestants and RuPaul, whether they are in drag or not. During the runway presentation, echoing the word Extravaganza, RuPaul usually shouts Eleganza! And after the contestants lip-sync, instead of stating “you win / you lose”, RuPaul states their fate with more musical terms: Chantey, you stay / Sashay away. Only once, RuPaul used Goils – in “Just between us goils” (ep. 04); Goils would become frequently used after this initial season.
It was from season two onwards, that vocabulary dragulation really set off. One example is She-mail, when RuPaul announces “You’ve got She-mail.” Also from season two (ep. 07), RuPaul ends a fairy-tale with the stock phrase: And they lived draggily ever after.
From third season on, RuPaul exchanges the t and g from the word Congratulations; and since t sounds like a d in many English dialects, the winning contestants are praised with Condragulations. Another word favoured by RuPaul is Herstory.
And when RuPaul touches the subject of English in season three, he even jokes: “Here at RuPauls Drag Race we don’t just entertain. We edumacate.” Edumacate is a word used to mock the meaning of educate.



Season four started with “The big drag disaster of all time: the RuPocalypse…” Other words that appeared were Glamazon and Dragazines.
The current All Stars edition introduced Shelarious and Shemergency.
“Just neologisms,” you may say.
I’m inclined to affirm that besides being neologisms such words epitomise a natural principle of deviation (strangeness) operating within the language. It seems evident that with each successful season of the show, as RuPaul grows in confidence so grows the frequency with which such words are used in the show. Linguistic strangeness surfaces as RuPaul feels comfortable. And this is another evidence that support Crystal’s hypothesis “that it’s normal to be strange, as regards the use of language.”
While descriptions of the Queen’s English are generally found in prescriptive grammar books and normative dictionaries, descriptions of the Drag Queen’s English are not as easily available. So, in terms of English, RuPaul and the contestants of Drag Race are bringing a great contribution to the general American audience and particularly to learners of English around the world.