The Ballroom Masquerade: Gen-Z's Dance with AAE and Intersectional Language Público
Robinson, Zinnia (Spring 2025)
Abstract
Black queer language has had a traceable lineage from the nineteenth-century drag balls of the first self-proclaimed drag queen, William Dorsey Swann, to its first thrust into the mainstream with Jennie Livingston’s 1991 underground Ballroom documentary Paris Is Burning, to present- day media like RuPaul’s Drag Race. At the same time, it is being decontextualized and employed everywhere, from Atlanta housewives to the social media spaces of Generation Z. Many scholarly texts examine African American English (AAE) and queer language as distinctive spheres while I delve into the overlap. The goals of this study were to understand Generation Z’s perception and usage of what I coin as Black Queer Intersectional Language (BQIL) by understanding what terms are included under this umbrella, what makes some user’s performance of the language more authentic and genuine to my Black queer participants, and who has the “right” to BQIL and whether there is a way to reclaim language that has left this niche group. To answer these questions, this study relied on a Black queer focus group discussion, semi-structured interviews with self-identified queer students, and social media analysis. The subsequent data was analyzed through the frameworks of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and abolitionist anthropology. From the data, it was concluded that BQIL consists of phrases created, popularized, or predominantly used by Black queer individuals across time. While the majority state that Black queer people have the “right” to the language, heterosexual, non-queer Black people can also use BQIL authentically due to an essentialized Blackness. My Black queer interlocutors are less preoccupied with policing the overall usage of BQIL outside of the authentic group and instead seek to call out those who use the language in ways that are perceived as conditional, disrespectful, or patronizing. Reclamation of BQIL does not seem likely due to Generation Z’s significant social media presence that furthers the disarticulation of Black queer culture from its roots. These findings are important because they explicate the intersection between AAE and queer language as BQIL and center marginalized voices in a generation at the forefront of media consumption.
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 1
METHODOLOGY ............................................................................................................... 20
WHY EMORY? A LONG WAY FROM 1836 ........................................................................... 27
CHAPTER I: WHAT IS BQIL? ............................................................................................. 30
CHAPTER II: STUDENT CASE STUDIES ............................................................................ 62
CHAPTER III: RIGHTS AND RECLAMATIONS .................................................................. 81
CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................... 95
REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 101
APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................ 111
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