Snatching the Audience. A Stylistic and Multimodal Investigation of Drag Meaning-Making in 'RuPaul's Drag race'

RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present, henceforth RPDR) provides a lens through which to examine the intersection of language, performance and social critique. This entails an investigation of how drag queens communicate meaning and represent themselves as social actors within specific contexts and circumstances. Above entertainment, drag performers take advantage of their visibility also to initiate discourse surrounding social issues of identity, trying to engage the audience in order to foster solidarity and facilitate change (Brennan and Gudelunas, 2017; Brown, 2018). This is consistent with the theories of performativity put forth by Judith Butler (1990; 1993), for whom identity is not an inherent quality, but rather a performative construction. The show’s global reach provides a platform for drag queens to address intersectional issues, sharing personal experiences that connect with broader societal dynamics (Collins 2015). Indeed, RPDR’s roots in Ballroom Culture further inform this analysis, as the House System and Ballroom scene historically provided spaces for marginalized individuals to express their identities through performance (Bailey 2013). Drag culture has inherited, mainstreamed, and commodified many of these features (Heller 2018), bringing intersectionality into public view. Kimberlé Crenshaw’s framework of intersectionality (1989; 1991) is applied to examine how drag performers navigate issues of race, gender, sexuality, and class, illustrating the complexity of their identities and the socio-political implications of their performances. With these premises, this research proposes a stylistic and multimodal examination of RPDR, with a focus on the Snatch Game episodes, a recurring challenge that tests drag queens in celebrity impersonation (Ferris 2011). These instances illustrate how social identity is performed and negotiated through a blend of verbal and non-verbal cues, reflecting and subverting societal norms (Shetina 2018). By drawing on Butler’s concept of performativity, wherein identity is enacted through repeated actions, the study reveals how drag personas challenge mainstream narratives and assert agency. Methodologically, this study employs an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating Michael Halliday’s (2014) Systemic Functional Linguistics and Theo van Leeuwen’s (2003) Representation of Social Actors. Halliday’s Grammar of Experience provides a framework for analysing drag queens’ linguistic choices convey meaning through transitivity, emphasizing actions and participants. van Leeuwen’s Social Actor Network (2008) examines how agency and power dynamics shape the representation of social actors and emphasize the fluidity and multiplicity inherent in drag performances. Complementing this sociolinguistic inquiry analysis is the concept of multimodal prosody (Balirano 2017), which explores how multiple semiotic resources – words, images, and sounds – combine to create cohesive meaning and challenge social norms. Style, a key element in drag performances, encompasses both visual and linguistic choices. Halliday’s assertion that style shapes a “mental picture of reality” (2014) highlights the deliberate construction of drag personas, who disrupt and critique societal perceptions through performance. Ultimately, this research bridges Stylistics and Multimodality, contributing to the emerging field of Multimodal Stylistics (Nørgaard 2010). By integrating linguistic and semiotic analyses, the study expands the concept of ‘text’ to encompass multisensory domains, offering new insights into how drag performances communicate and challenge social norms.