“We All Country”: Region, Place, and Community Language among Oklahoma City Drag Performers

Abstract

This study aims to build on limited research in Oklahoma LGBTQ+ populations and to consider intersectional queer and trans perspectives on region and place as constructs within broader sociolinguistic work. The primary data come from linguistic ethnographic and queer folk linguistic work in a community of drag performers who detail the hardships of navigating a region like Oklahoma as nonheterosexual, noncisgender, and in some cases non-White Oklahomans. Their discussions of 39th Street, a culturally important site with a long history of LGBTQ+ protection, reveal that it, too, is riddled with racial, transphobic, and class-based ideologies that intersect with economic and practice-based difficulties for both new and seasoned performers. What emerges is an indication that queer kinship systems, familial communities within the community of practice, are integral parts of survival for performers and that language is both affected by such kinship systems and employed as a tool for navigating this place.