The fierceness of fronted /s/: Linguistic rhematization through visual transformation JEREMY CALDER University of Colorado Boulder, USA ABSTRACT This article explores the roles that language and the body play in the iconiza- tion of cross-modal personae (see Agha 2003, 2004). Focusing on a commu- nity of radical drag queens in San Francisco, I analyze the interplay of visual presentation and acoustic dimensions of /s/ in the construction of the fierce queen persona, which embodies an extreme, larger-than-life, and anti-norma- tive type of femininity. Taking data from transformations—conversations during which queens visually transform from male-presenting into their fem- inine drag personae—I explore the effect of fluid visual presentation on lin- guistic production, and argue that changes in both the linguistic and visual streams increasingly invoke qualia (see Gal 2013; Harkness 2015) projecting ‘harshness’ and ‘sharpness’ in the construction of fierce femininity. I argue that personae like the fierce queen become iconized through rhematization (see Gal 2013), a process in which qualic congruences are construed and con- structed across multiple semiotic modalities. (Iconization, rhematization, qualia, sociophonetics, gender, personae, drag queens)* INTRODUCTION This article explores the roles that language and the visual body play in the icon- ization of cross-modal personae. Agha (2003, 2004) describes how culturally recognizable images of personhood are made relevant and legible through cross- modal icons, the emergence of iconicity that ideologically links language and other semiotic modalities (e.g. visual information) to personae with which they share a perceived quality. Focusing on a community of radical drag queens in San Francisco, I analyze the interplay of visual presentation and acoustic dimen- sions of /s/ in the construction of the fierce queen, a legible persona within queer communities of practice that embodies an extreme, larger-than-life, and anti- normative type of femininity. The voiceless anterior sibilant /s/ is a highly salient sociolinguistic variable whose acoustic properties are imbued with various social meanings related to gender, sexuality, and extremity. Fronted /s/—the articulation of the sound farther forward in the mouth, which results in a higher acoustic frequency—has been indexically linked with femininity and queerness, both in speech production © Cambridge University Press, 2018 0047-4045/18 $15.00 31 Language in Society 48, 31–64. doi:10.1017/S004740451800115X terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S004740451800115X Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Colorado Boulder, on 11 Feb 2020 at 18:59:55, subject to the Cambridge Core