Metalinguistic discourses of ‘styling the other’

Abstract

This article explores how mobility shapes language, gender and sexuality during periods of indeterminacy, focusing on the discursive construction of masculinities. Using styling/‘styling the other’ as an interpretive framework, the article analyses how economic precarity leads to ambivalence in the masculinities of Zimbabwean heterosexual-identifying male migrants (ages 26–30 years) in Johannesburg. Interview data suggests that these men engaged in male-to-male sex work to achieve economic security. To solicit wealthy white men, the men performed stereotypical Black hypermasculinity and sophisticated, cosmopolitan gay subjectivities through language crossing and physical styling. These performances ultimately aimed to achieve the normative masculine identity of being a husband and provider. The article elucidates the paradox in which the men appropriated Polari, a British gay patois, and foreign or white understandings of Black/African masculinity to style the ‘other’ while fulfilling traditional Zimbabwean notions of masculinity.