Charting New Territories in Drag Discourse. Multimodal and Stylistic Insights of "RuPaul’s Drag Race"

This chapter explores the discursive and representational strategies of drag performers within the mediated context of RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009–present) with a specific focus on the backstage interactions of season 16 queens Plane Jane and Sapphira Crystàl. Drawing on Halliday’s (2014) Grammar of Experience and van Leeuwen’s (2008) Social Actor Network, the study analyses the linguistic and social construction of queer identities as both situated and intersectional. By examining the queens’ verbal exchanges and narrative framings, the chapter elucidates how drag performers negotiate identity through processes of meaning-making that encompass ethnicity, gender, familial heritage, and cultural belonging. Far from being isolated acts of self-expression, these performances are anchored in communal, political, and affective practices that subvert hegemonic norms and reimagine kinship through chosen families. The queens’ linguistic stylization – whether in camp-infused humor or in emotionally charged confessions – becomes a vehicle for embodied storytelling and symbolic reclamation. Plane Jane’s recollections of her Russian grandmother, alongside Sapphira Crystàl’s narrative of paternal estrangement and reconciliation, exemplify the ways drag discourse traverses and reshapes conventional boundaries of identity and belonging. Through an interdisciplinary lens that integrates queer cultural studies and research on drag culture, the chapter highlights drag performativity as a transformative act staged by intersectional identities.