What is it about?
By focusing on speeches given by a famous Irish drag performer Panti Bliss, the study shows how drag combines art, personal experience, and political activism. It explains how what happens on stage reflects wider ideas about gender, sexuality, and belonging.
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Why is it important?
This work shows reveals how drag uses language to challenge stereotypes, question social norms, and influence public opinion. By analysing real speeches that helped shape attitudes toward same-sex marriage in Ireland, the article demonstrates that performance can lead to real social change. It connects everyday language with major political debates, showing how voices from marginalized communities can transform society.
Perspectives
This article reflects my interest in how language operates at the intersection of identity, performance, and social power. By analysing drag discourse, I aimed to demonstrate that linguistic choices made on stage are never accidental, but are shaped by cultural expectations, personal experience, and political context. Studying Panti Bliss’s speeches allowed me to observe how artistic expression and activism can merge into a single communicative act.
Maria Szymańska
University of Lodz
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Performative Discourse of Drag Queens: A Sociolinguistic Study, Research in Language, March 2020, Uniwersytet Lodzki (University of Lodz),
DOI: 10.18778/1731-7533.18.1.02.
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