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Abstract
“Reading is the real art form of insults. You get in a smart crack, and everyone laughsand kikis because you’ve found a flaw and exaggerated it, then you’ve got a good read
going. . . ” - Dorian Corey (Livingston, 1990)
Within the format of the Rupaul’s Drag Race program, there exists a challenge focusedsolely on the art of reading, opening with the famed line: “in the tradition of Paris is Burning, the library is officially open.” (Livingston, 1990) The goal of this study is to understand what language forms and themes are utilized in successful reads within the program, with conclusions based on an analysis of each read performed by the winner of each challenge. It is hypothesized that conversational implicature is essential to the effectiveness of reads (Levinson, 2000). Using the Gricean framework of implicature as distilled by Levinson (1983), all instances of winning reads were coded based on language form and their intended meanings. The utterances were simialrly coded for theme to compare with previous work (Podboj, 2023). It was determined that implicature was the most prolific language form used by successful reads, and that a majority of successful reads were directed at an addressee’s appearance. This work is aiming to set the groundwork for future projects which compare these results with naturally occurring language data, as the produced nature of film cannot be treated as equivalent to such data (Dynel, 2011a).
Within the format of the Rupaul’s Drag Race program, there exists a challenge focusedsolely on the art of reading, opening with the famed line: “in the tradition of Paris is Burning, the library is officially open.” (Livingston, 1990) The goal of this study is to understand what language forms and themes are utilized in successful reads within the program, with conclusions based on an analysis of each read performed by the winner of each challenge. It is hypothesized that conversational implicature is essential to the effectiveness of reads (Levinson, 2000). Using the Gricean framework of implicature as distilled by Levinson (1983), all instances of winning reads were coded based on language form and their intended meanings. The utterances were simialrly coded for theme to compare with previous work (Podboj, 2023). It was determined that implicature was the most prolific language form used by successful reads, and that a majority of successful reads were directed at an addressee’s appearance. This work is aiming to set the groundwork for future projects which compare these results with naturally occurring language data, as the produced nature of film cannot be treated as equivalent to such data (Dynel, 2011a).