{"title":"“You know she didn’t have no country”","authors":"Nicholas Kontovas","doi":"10.1075/jls.20001.kon","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This study focuses on switches into and out of African American English among contestants of the television series\n RuPaul’s Drag Race. Following Barrett (1995), I note that Black contestants who are\n comfortable in White Middle-Class American English tend to use it as their primary dialect, switching to AAE in order to develop\n rapport. I suggest that non-Black performers switch into AAE either in order to mitigate the effects of comments which might\n otherwise be interpreted as rude, or to reinforce strength in moments of emotional self-disclosure, and that this is possibly\n reflective of an interpretation on the part of the speaker that forwardness and strength constitute a normal element – ‘sass’ – of\n Black women’s speech. Finally, I explore the possible social impact of this phenomenon from the perspective of two common themes\n in the popular discourse on race: one centered on cultural appropriation, the other on the perception of Black Women’s\n Language.","PeriodicalId":36680,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Language and Sexuality","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-02-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Language and Sexuality","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1075/jls.20001.kon","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This study focuses on switches into and out of African American English among contestants of the television series
RuPaul’s Drag Race. Following Barrett (1995), I note that Black contestants who are
comfortable in White Middle-Class American English tend to use it as their primary dialect, switching to AAE in order to develop
rapport. I suggest that non-Black performers switch into AAE either in order to mitigate the effects of comments which might
otherwise be interpreted as rude, or to reinforce strength in moments of emotional self-disclosure, and that this is possibly
reflective of an interpretation on the part of the speaker that forwardness and strength constitute a normal element – ‘sass’ – of
Black women’s speech. Finally, I explore the possible social impact of this phenomenon from the perspective of two common themes
in the popular discourse on race: one centered on cultural appropriation, the other on the perception of Black Women’s
Language.