“Sit on Someone Else’s Face, I’m Busy!”: How Drag Queens Use Language to Perform Camp on RuPaul’s Drag Race 

Introduction and Background

Drag queens are widely celebrated for their visual artistry, but here we want to demonstrate that some of their most powerful tools are actually linguistic. Through wit, playful insults, and references to iconic celebrities and pop culture moments, drag performers manipulate language in highly creative and entertaining ways. 

Drag performance has long been closely associated with camp, a queer aesthetic and discursive style characterized by irony, exaggeration, theatricality, and the subversion of gender stereotypes and heteronormativity. In an early and pioneering discussion of camp, the theorist Susan Sontag emphasized its stylized appreciation of artifice and exaggeration (Sontag, 1964). While Sontag famously described camp as a sensibility that transforms seriousness into playfulness, later scholars like Jeremy Carl Kelley (2013) have argued that camp should be understood not simply as an aesthetic but as a systematic interactional resource used to construct queer identity and community. 

Linguistic anthropologists have also examined the relationship between drag performance and language. Rusty Barrett’s work on gay male subcultures demonstrates how drag queens use stylized speech practices to construct gendered personas and index community membership (Barrett, 1999). Barrett shows that drag performers frequently shift between multiple speech styles, layering voices and identities in ways that challenge conventional assumptions about gender and language.

For any interested readers, a well-known portrayal of earlier drag and ballroom culture can be seen in the documentary Paris Is Burning, which provides historical insight into the performance traditions that shaped contemporary drag culture (see the trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SqvD1-0odY )

One of the most visible contemporary spaces where these practices occur today though, is the television show RuPaul’s Drag Race. Since its debut in 2009, the show has become one of the most influential platforms for drag culture worldwide. It functions not only as a competition show, but also as a cultural space where drag discourse and the camp aesthetics that shape it are performed, circulated, and reproduced for both queer communities and mainstream audiences.

This project builds on these insights by asking the following question:

How is camp indexed through language in a highly ritualized performance context such as RuPaul’s Drag Race, and how does this linguistic performance affirm queer identity and culture?

Methods

To explore this question, our project focuses on the popular “Snatch Game” challenge from RuPaul’s Drag Race. In Snatch Game, contestants impersonate celebrities within a parody game-show format inspired by the classic television show Match Game. Unlike other challenges on the show, Snatch Game is all about wordplay: success often depends heavily on improvisational humor, quick wit, and creative cultural references.

Because this analysis examines drag discourse within a televised competition, it is important to situate the speech events within their broader communicative context. Linguistic anthropologist Dell Hymes proposed the SPEAKING model as a framework for analyzing speech events within their cultural settings (Hymes, 1974). The model highlights how communicative practices are shaped by elements such as participants, setting, norms of interaction, and genre.

Snatch Game represents a very layered communicative environment. The setting is a parody game show embedded within a reality competition television series. The participants include the queens performing celebrity impersonations, the host RuPaul, fellow competitors, the in-game “contestestants”, and the broader television audience. The genre blends improvisational comedy, celebrity impersonation, and drag performance.

These overlapping contexts create a form of layered artifice, where contestants perform multiple identities simultaneously: they perform their drag queen personas, impersonate celebrity figures, and compete as contestants within a reality television format. This complex performance structure makes Snatch Game an especially productive site for examining how camp is linguistically constructed and interpreted in a mediated performance setting. 

For this study, eight iconic Snatch Game performances were selected from across multiple seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race. These performances were chosen as a representative sample  due to their high status within the show’s fan community, illustrating how effectively Ru Paul’s Drag Race disseminates drag performance across the wider culture. Readers unfamiliar with the format can view examples of Snatch Game performances in widely circulated clips online (see this compilation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRm0WKPyC9M ) 

The selected performances were transcribed and analyzed for recurring linguistic patterns.

Results

The analysis revealed four linguistic strategies that appeared consistently across the selected Snatch Game performances.

Table 1. Linguistic resources used to index camp in Snatch Game performances

Linguistic Resource	Description	Function in Camp Performance
Metapragmatic Humor	Jokes that comment on the performance, situation, or the interaction itself	Highlights the artificiality of performance, generates humor
Intertextual Referencing	References to celebrities, films, music, or cultural icons	Activates shared cultural knowledge and signals queer cultural literacy
Sexual Innuendo	Double entendre and playful or absurd references to sexuality	Produces humor through exaggeration and challenges normative expectations
Character Recognition and Subversion	Establishing a recognizable celebrity persona and then exaggerating or distorting it	Creates camp through parody, exaggeration, and reinterpretation of cultural figures

Table 1: Summary of the four linguistic resources identified in the analysis of Snatch Game performances.

These discursive resources allow drag queens to create camp performances that rely simultaneously on humor, cultural recognition, and exaggerated character portrayal. The following are textual examples drawn from the segments we transcribed.

Metapragmatic Humor: Ginger Minj as Adele, Season 7 Episode 7

Ru Paul: It’s a good answer but not a match darling 

Adele: Well could I get a match please, its a fake cigarette 

Intertextual Referencing: Gigi Goode as Maria the Robot, Season 12 Episode 6 

Ru Paul: Now Maria, do you know Siri and Alexa? 

Maria: One second… searching… she’s my sister, bitch

Sexual Innuendo: Bonnie Ann Clyde as “Chair” (Cher), UK Season 4 Episode 7

Ru Paul: Oh yes, and what a solo act you are, I sit on you all the time

Chair: Sit on someone else’s face, I’m busy! 

Character Recognition and Subversion: Jimbo as Shirley Temple, All-Stars Season 8, Episode 4 

Bowen Yang: Snatchlerette number 4, what song would you say best describes your love life, and why? 

Shirley: I would say “The Good Lollipop” cause I’m a sweet trip to the candy shop! I’m all growed up now, I’m one hundred years old! 

Discussion and Conclusion

When taken together, these findings suggest that camp in drag performance is not only a visual aesthetic or comedic style. It is also indexed through a complex set of linguistic practices that allows performers to manipulate voice, reference shared cultural knowledge, and exaggerate familiar identities to humorous effect. 

Ultimately these linguistic strategies do more than just entertain the audience or advance the queens through the competition. They also function as a way of affirming queer identity and community belonging. In recognizing the references, jokes, and exaggerated performances, the queens draw on a shared cultural repertoire, one that draws on decades of queer history, celebrity iconography, and drag traditions.

In this sense, camp functions as a cultural as well as linguistic resource. Through humor, parody, and exaggeration, drag queens create moments of shared recognition that reinforce a sense of community among audiences and performers alike.

By examining the language of drag performance, this project highlights the important role that linguistic creativity plays in shaping contemporary queer culture. More broadly, it demonstrates how camp continues to function as a vibrant and affirming mode of queer cultural expression.

References

Barrett, R. (1999). From drag queens to leathermen: Language, gender, and gay male subcultures. In M. Bucholtz, A. Liang, & L. Sutton (Eds.), Reinventing identities: The gendered self in discourse (pp. 313–331). Oxford University Press.

Hymes, D. (1974). Foundations in sociolinguistics: An ethnographic approach. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kelley, J. C. (2013). Queering conversation: An ethnographic exploration of the functional properties of camp-based language use in U.S. gay men’s interactions. UCLA.

Natacha Marjanovic, “Be Proud, and Loud”: Linguistic Markers of Pride in Drag Queens’     Spoken Discourse », Discours [En ligne], 32 | 2023, mis en ligne le 22 juin 2023, consulté le 13 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/discours/12425 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/discours.12425

Sontag, S. (1964). Notes on camp. Partisan Review, 31(4), 515–530.

Natacha Marjanovic, “Be Proud, and Loud”: Linguistic Markers of Pride in Drag Queens’ Spoken Discourse », Discours [En ligne], 32 | 2023, mis en ligne le 22 juin 2023, consulté le 13 février 2026. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/discours/12425 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/discours.12425

Appendix

Snatch Game, Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Select Transcriptions 

Bonnie Ann Clyde as “Chair”, UK Season 4 Episode 7 

Ru: Up next (.) <take a seat y’all>it is chair (cheering)

Chair: Hey R::u (.) it’s been so long (.)  you might not recognize me since I’ve been reupholstered so many <times>

Ru: [hhh- 

Chair: [You wanna know what they’re starting to call it? 

Ru: What?

Chair: A [chairlift

Ru: [hhh (.) now chair, do you get along (.) with the other furniture in the living room?

Chair: I d::o, I used to be in a relationship with one of them actually we were called table and chair

Ru: [hhh 

Chair: [so

Ru:[hh

Chair: [it didn’t work out so I’m a s::olo act n::ow

Ru: Oh and what a solo act <you are> (.) I sit on you ::all the time 

Chair: Sit on someone else’s face I’m busy

Ru:hhh

Ginger Minj as Adele, Season 7 Episode 7

Ru: Last but not least, music superstar Adele is here

Adele: Could I buy a vowel? 

Ru: What is that darling?

Adele: No emmys! 

Ru: No no no this is the wrong show!

Adele: Okay 

Ru Paul: Where in England are you from Adele? 

Adele: My house 

Ru Paul: Alright, now Dorothy blanks the Tin Man

Adele: Well if it was me, I would say she rips out his heart and then sings a whole album about it, and gets really popular but its not me

Ru Paul: No, no 

Adele: So I said, she polishes his chrome 

Ru: It’s a good answer but not a match darling 

Adele: Well could I get a match please, its a fake cigarette 

Gigi Goode as Maria the Robot, Season 12 Episode 6 

Ru Paul: Hi Maria 

Maria: What’s up, bitch? 

Ru Paul: Now, do you know Siri and Alexa? 

Maria: One second, searching, she’s my sister, bitch 

Jujubee as Eartha Kitt, Season 5 Episode 4

Participant: Contestant number two, I’m originally from Canada, so if we went up there for a winter visit, how would you keep me warm? 

Eartha: I would sensually walk to the thermostat, and turn up the thermostat to a sensible seventy four.

Participant: Contestant number two, same question

Eartha: Ribbet, ribbet, I am a lady frog, and you are a sweet prince, and I am convincing you 

Jinkx Monsoon as Little Edie (Gray Gardens) Season 5, Episode 5 

Ru Paul: Direct fro Grey Gardens its little Edie Beale

Edie: Oh hi Ru 

Ru Paul: How is big Edie doing

Edie: She’s always begging for the paté, but the label is faded, I can never tell if its paté or if its jiblets for the cats 

Edie: Ru, if I might ask you, why you couldn’t have gotten any real celebrities for this game? 

Ru: Well

Edie: I don’t have a single idea who any of these people are, you could’ve gotten Leslie Careoux or Audrey Hepburn or any one of them and instead you got Ketchup? 

Kesha: Ketchup? 

Edie: And that must be Janice Jickson? 

Alexis Michelle as Liza Minelli, Season 9 Episode 6

Ru Paul: Ring them bells, it’s Liza Minelli, or is it Lisa Minulli? 

Liza: No Ru, its Liza, with a Z, it has a Z

Ru: Its Liza with a Z

Liza: WIth a Z!

Ru Paul: Liza Minelli

Liza: I said, Ladybunny’s Palace, 

Ru Paul: Her palace 

Liza: Because, there’s nothing like playing the palace,

Ru Paul:[hhhh

Liza:  Mama played the palace, and I sat right in the fourth row

Ru Paul:[wow

Liza:[She sang right to me

Ru Paul:[Oh boy

Liza: And to all the other homosexuals 

Ru Paul:[hhhh

Ben De La Creme as Maggie Smith, Season 6 Episode 5 

Ru: Alright, Dame Maggie Smith, Cher, completely addicted to social media, even her blank has a twitter account. 

Maggie: Well, ruple, Ruple is it? I understand virtually none of the words that left your lips moments ago, but I did hear the term twitter and I assumed that it’s some sort of a songbird? 

Ru:[hhh Very close, not a match…

Maggie: Am I to understand that one yanks one’s telephone right out of the wall and carries it with him? 

Ru: Yes 

Ru (to Nicki): You didn’t write down anything? 

Nick: No

Maggie: Perhaps she needs another pot of ink to replenish her quill 

Ru: Let’s move on down to Dame Maggie Smith

Maggie:[Well I’m unfamiliar with the work of lady Handler, however I did think that it would be rather amusing if there were libation flavored with…citrus hhh

Ru:[hhhh

Maggie: Can you imagine such a thing 

Ru:[hhh that is really newfangled I can’t imagine such a thing 

Jimbo as Shirley Temple, All-Stars Season 8, Episode 4 

Ru: She’s America’s OG sweetheart, Shirley Temple is here

Shirley: Well hello Ru! 

Ru:[hhhh

Shirley: I won the hearts of America and the world 

Ru:[hhhh yes you did, are you ready to win the heart of a nice “snatchler”?

Shirley: I don’t know, does he know how to babysit?

Ru:[hhhh

Bowen Yang: Snatchlerette number 4, what song would you say best describes your love life, and why? 

Shirley: I would say “the good lollipop” cause I’m a sweet trip to the candy shop

Ru:[hhhhh 

Shirley: I’m all growed up now, I’m one hundred years old

Oyna Nurve as Eddie Murphy, Season 17 Episode 7 

Ru: Up next, comedy superstar, Eddie Murphy is here

Eddie: I’m so excited for tonight’s episode of the Snatch Game woo

Ru: Eddie, which is your favorite Greek superstar?

Eddie: You know its Hercules, Herecules, Hercules, Hercules, Hercules

Ru:[hhhh

Eddie:[hhh oh my mustache almost fell off