We have encountered several Characters with Components of their Identity that are not definitely Labelled or ‘Marked’. Analyse these Characters’ Relationships to Language in RooseVElvis and Chef as it correlates with this part of their Identity.

Chef, by Sabrina Mahfouz, is a soliloquy about a woman’s struggle to become a high-end chef, against familial and relationship drama, and her fate as the head of the prison kitchen, a convicted inmate. In RoosevElvis, by The Team, Ann and Brenda go on a road trip across the Badlands of the United States, a metaphor of self-discovery as Ann grapples with her alter-ego, Elvis Presley. Both plays use language in a distinct way to convey the ‘Markedness’ of the characters. For RoosevElvis, my focus will be on gender identity: there is a lack of language to define Ann, whose deviation from a binary gender perspective is complicated by her relationship with Elvis, as a Drag-King. I will explore this through Judith Butler’s theory of ‘Gender Performativity’[1], and my discussions on Drag-Kinging are influenced by Sharon Cowan’s The Elvis We Deserve.[2] For Chef, I will evaluate the politics of slam poetry and its relation to ‘marking’ Chef as a black woman, and the complex relationship of this form and the body of the performer in shaping identity. First, however, I will define ‘Markedness’, its relationship to language, and the complexities of disentangling the theory itself from a binary perspective.

 

Ferdinand de Saussure, in his exploration of language, theorised the system of semiotics.[3] He said that meaning is derived in the relationship between what one sees and what one perceives. He labelled these signifiers and signified. ‘The signifier is the physical appearance of the sign, such as a word, image, or sound, whilst the signified is the concept or meaning associated with the signifier.’[4] The signifier dictates the signified; whether that be syntagmatic (linearly displayed) or paradigmatic (alternatively displayed)[5], the signified is given value by a shared understanding between subjects – an ideology that binds them. The signified, then, is qualified by the signifier.

 

Through Saussure’s theory, ‘Markedness’ relates to the meaning derived from signifier and signified, for a signifier can only be ‘marked’ if it is labelled, with the label being its own signifier to qualify the signified. This allows for a ‘marked’ subject to become visible within society. An ‘unmarked’ subject, however, ‘cannot be reproduced within the ideology of the visible.’ [6] By ‘ideology of the visible’, I define the shared understanding of the signified, and will use it interchangeably with ‘dominant ideology’, the belief system of the majority, particularly the attributes of binarism (that there are two genders, male and female) and biological determinism (that biology dictates gender, as divided binarily.) This ideology dictates that gender is defined by common signifiers shared by bodies; subjects are grouped based on these attributes. A subject becomes visible because its signifiers have signification, as defined by the dominant ideology. As Saussure suggests, language qualifies signifiers; therefore, to become ‘marked’, one must be expressed through a linguistic label. An ‘unmarked’ body, then, does not conform to the pre-determined signified and so, in Phelan’s argument, alludes definition; thereby, alluding linguistic labelling. For an ‘unmarked’ subject does have signified meaning, but ‘the ideology of the visible’ has no language to express it, because its signification is dictated by a binarism belief system that freezes out the ‘unmarked.’

 

However, I argue that ‘the ideology of the visible’ is always defining those who do not fit its signification. To be called ‘unmarked’ is to be ‘marked.’ This paradox undermines the dominant ideology, who by labelling the ‘unmarked’ are illustrating that binarism is limited, for it is recognising something that cannot fit its ‘codes’ (my term for the value assigned to the signifiers, as shaped by the dominant ideology.) Nevertheless, it is still expressed in relation to it – one is ‘unmarked’ in relation to male or female. The ‘unmarked’ subject’s lack is part of its definition. Therefore, its signified is framed by ‘the ideology of the visible’, for signs are used by various people in multiple situations – their meanings are not fixed.[7] ‘The linguistic signs are, therefore, part of a social semiotic system capable of expressing the full range of a community’s social concerns.’[8] All signs, therefore, despite their meaning being fluid, are within ‘the ideology of the visible’ and are ‘marked’ or ‘unmarked’ in relation to it. This complex point will be reiterated throughout the examples of this essay. I will begin through the lens of gender performativity and an example from RoosevElvis.  

 

In Gender Trouble, Judith Butler discusses gender as performance: ‘the effect of gender is produced through the stylisation of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.’[9] These ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles’ are signifiers, with their meaning dictated by the dominant ideology; that certain actions conform to a particular gendered reading. Subjects are ‘marked’ by their appropriation of these traits. In RoosevElvis, Ann drag-kings as Elvis Presley. ‘Women dressing as men […] underscore the most salient and socially recognisable markers of masculinity whilst simultaneously demonstrating that these characteristics are not “natural” but can be appropriated, performed.’[10] These ‘markers of masculinity’ are the ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles’ that Butler defines. This ‘underscor[ing]’ relies on the incongruency between biologically reading a subject as ‘woman’ and reading the action as ‘man’: the actions that signify Elvis as a man are ‘appropriated’ by Ann, illustrating that masculinity is ‘performed.’

 

Ann’s dream of wearing male underwear can be analysed through this lens. Ann describes, ‘I’m naked and everyone can see the dude underwear I wear that are like baggy where my junk should be. But it’s like instead of it being humiliating it’s like this totally joyful thing.’[11] The colloquial nouns, ‘dude’ and ‘junk’, carry gendered meaning: of masculinity. This creates an incongruent identity, for the body of Ann is read as female, as, in the dominant ideology, the biological marker of the ‘junk’ defines masculinity; Ann’s lack is, therefore, female. This contradicts the masculine signifiers of the ‘dude underwear’: our fixation of the underwear as a masculine signifier illustrates that gender is performative, as a subject ‘marked’ as female can obtain male styles.

 

However, despite conveying that gender, here, is performative, I am not disentangled from a binary reading of gender. I perceive the incongruency between Ann and the underwear because I read the signifiers in the language of the dominant ideology: I read Ann as female, ‘marked’ by the word ‘actress’[12] and her name, ‘Ann’, which has female connotations. In using the pronoun ‘her’ as I write (when it is never mentioned in the text), I am enacting the colonialisation of gender by the dominant ideology. I am using language to define Ann based on the visual signifiers that I envision from the linguistic ‘markers’, which I recognise as having pre-determined value, categorising “her” into a binary way of thinking. Thus, Ann is ‘unmarked’ in that she crosses gender boundaries, but she is also ‘marked’ as female via the biological signifier. Therefore, gender is only performative because of the incongruency between biology and ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles.’ To eradicate this incongruency, one would need to read the ‘dude underwear’ without concluding masculinity, or Ann without femininity. Language, here, becomes a restrictive ‘marker’. Very few linguistic labels are used in RoosevElvis; thus, Ann, as Phelan suggests, alludes ‘the ideology of the visible.’

 

Earlier in the play, however, Ann is ‘marked’. In the diner, ‘Brenda: (Pointing at Ann) [says] GAY PERSON’[13]. The mode of address ‘gay person’ categorises Ann; she is read through the signification of ‘gay’. What is interesting here is that even before the ‘marking’, I perceived Ann as queer. Drag-kinging and her relationship with Brenda were read as ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles’ that signified queerness. This implies that the supposed ‘unmarked’ are ‘marked’, for certain characteristics are attributed to them; otherwise, ‘gay person’ would have no signification. However, Ann rejects being labelled as ‘gay person’. She says, ‘can you keep it down’[14], signalling her fear of being “called out”. Brenda literally enacts this by ‘(pointing at Ann)’. Her choice to say ‘GAY PERSON’ over ‘gay people’ perhaps signals her own fear and a lack of solidarity.

 

Stephen Greer criticises “coming-out” (or “called out”), as ‘it presumes that the default state of the gay subject is closeted, dominated, […] and diminishes – if not refuses – […] that […] to come out might involve something other than shame.'[15] The dominant ideology, in trying to make it visible, defines ‘the gay subject’ as repressed – there is no attempt to eradicate the repression but to make it part of the subject’s definition. One, therefore, assumes that Ann is ‘closeted’ and must “come out”. I am not immune to this assumption: I read Ann’s refusal of being ‘marked’ as ‘gay’ as fear. Perhaps a subject isn’t aware of the dominant ideology’s necessity for one to “come out” – queer subjects do not need to “come out” to recognise themselves; “coming out” is to be ‘marked’ in the language of the dominant ideology. Therefore, Ann’s refusal to be ‘marked’ as ‘gay person’ could be read as a rejection of definition, for the meaning of ‘gay’ is dictated by the dominant ideology. Ann remains linguistically ‘unmarked’, denying the dominant ideology power to dictate “her” identity.

 

Nevertheless, ‘GAY PERSON’ could also be read as a reclamation of language, a 'Voice-cry. Agony – the 'spoken' word exploded, blown to bits by suffering and anger, demolishing discourse.'[16] This ‘voice-cry’ draws attention to ‘the spoken word’ to unsettle the dominant ideology, and it offers reclamation by framing the word in a new context. The graphology of capital letters, ‘GAY PERSON’, supports the ‘cry’ and ‘agony’ through a connotation of volume. Brenda, in her utterance, defines Ann through the language of the dominant ideology. Similar to a ‘voice-cry’, Michel Foucault coins ‘“fearless speech” – speech that operates outside of and against institutional discourse’[17], this being the dominant ideology. A spoken word is given new meaning or transferred between contexts based on its “spoken-ness”. Ann’s ‘can you keep it down’ illustrates how ‘GAY PERSON’ is ‘marked’ but not spoken, so speaking (as Brenda does) acts a ‘double-mark’, reminding one that the subject is ‘marked’ and transcending it from a repressed position to one of expression. Its definition is reclaimed, and the ‘shame’ of the ‘closet’ subverted, for “silence” is no longer a component of its definition – therefore, operating ‘against institutional discourse.’

 

However, Foucault’s theory implies that there is an outside of ‘institutional discourse.’ As I have expressed, the term ‘unmarked’ does mark; a subject cannot exist outside of institutional discourse if it is recognised by it (as ‘GAY PERSON’ is) or if its definition relies on it. I have expressed that queer subjects are defined by ‘the ideology of the visible’ (or ‘institutional discourse’) due to the ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles’ they perform, which signify meaning as determined by ‘the ideology of the visible.’ Nevertheless, Ann’s own refusal to be ‘marked’ as ‘gay person’ could be seen as affirming the dominant ideology, by enacting the repressed definition and staying ‘closeted.’ The word remains framed by the dominant ideology.    

 

A similar identity-language relationship can be analysed in Chef, although I will be focussing on ethnicity over gender. The play can be categorised as slam poetry due to its structure, rhythm, and solo orality, such as the distinct repetition and rhythm of ‘I really love/ I really do/ I’m sorry you know I/ you know I wouldn’t do/ it’s just that/ the way you/ the way I –’[18] when Chef narrates her abusive partner’s attempt at an apology. This form carries its own connotations of identity. Elaine Aston argues that ‘Drawing on the traditions of orality is a way of linking with the cultures of the black diaspora’[19]. Slam poetry, in Aston’s eyes, then, is linked to black identity politics. As discussed earlier, if signification is determined by the ideology of the signifier, then that ideology is reflected onto the subject, for the subject is framed by its ‘codes’. If slam poetry is ‘important to the identity politics of black women’[20], then Chef is ‘marked’ as a black woman. The language form imprints an expected identity for the character, as well as the body onstage.

 

For the 2014 Edinburgh Fringe touring, where Chef won the Fringe First Award, Jade Anouka, an identifying black actress, played Chef[21]; the Bristol Old Vic production in May 2021, Ruby Ward, also a black identifying actress, played Chef[22] – both conforming to the “expected” identity politics of slam poetry. For the 2022 production at King’s Cross Theatre, Australia, Chef was played by Alice Birbara, an identifying Lebanese-Australian queer actress.[23] Here, the slam poetry form of Chef doesn’t represent ‘the black diaspora’ as Aston suggests, for the body of the performer contradicts the projected identity of the language. However, Aston’s suggestion works on the assumption that slam poetry is universally read as a black voice. One cannot assume how an audience interprets signifiers.

 

What I am interested in, however, is whether language and other signifiers are “owned” by a particular ideology. As I have expressed, signification is shaped by ideology, but the unfixed nature of meaning suggests that the receiving subject can become author. If ideology dictates signification (and, therefore, slam poetry is framed as ‘black diaspora’), then Anna George argues that ‘the use of the new medium [slam poetry] and its tools of expressing creativity hinder honest expression when a person of different ethnicity uses it. It results in an identity crises and lack of self-discovery.’[24] If a subject does not conform to the expected ethnicity of slam poetry, then an incongruency will be created between how the language marks the speaker and how the body does. Therefore, George would argue that Birbara’s rendition of Chef would disrupt the character’s identity because she is misappropriating the “black” voice of slam poetry. This implies, as with ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles’, that ethnicity is performative. Of course, however, not everyone will read slam poetry as ‘black diaspora.’ In this instance, the visual signifier of the performer’s body might usurp that of language; Chef becomes ‘marked’ by the signifiers of the body.   

 

This is complicated by the use of free direct speech. ‘I really love […] the way I –’ uses italics to signify that another character is speaking. The noun ‘man’ used earlier in ‘I loved a man once’[25], marks the voice as Chef’s boyfriend, dictating that the ‘I’ here is male, as opposed to the ‘I’ of Chef, which is ‘marked’ as female by the body of the performer and the pronoun ‘she’ in ‘She is the only actor and can be any age and any ethnicity’[26]. Nevertheless, the character signified by the language (as male) is left physically ‘unmarked’. This reverses narrative colonialism, for the female body, here, usurps the male, but still narrates its story; Mahfouz is offering a female constructed perspective. The incongruency between the body of the performer being Chef and then a voice ‘marked’ as male but visually ‘unmarked’, undermines the conventional gender perception, for the male voice is then ‘marked’ with a female body; therefore, identity is illustrated as crossing boundaries. However, I perceive the voice as visually ‘unmarked’ because I read the body of the performer through the lens of the dominant ideology – that it can only be female, as determined by its biological markers. Contrarily, the voice is visually ‘marked’, just not as the dominant ideology expects it to be. This supports Phelan’s claim that an unmarked ‘subject cannot be reproduced in the ideology of the visible’, but not because the subject has different signifiers; but because these signifiers can only be labelled binarily by the dominant ideology.

 

RoosevElvis also has a complicated body-identity relationship, for Ann drag-kings as Elvis. Elvis is a recognisable sign who Ann can frame her identity through. Elvis, Sharon Cowan argues, symbolises the ‘many and often competing notions of what it means to be a sexed/gendered person in the world […] the very instability of the image of Elvis itself is the thing that allows for the renegotiation and representation of other unstable concepts.’[27] Elvis is a figure of contradictions, not defined by masculinity but by various gendered and ethnic performances upon masculinity; thereby presenting ‘competing notions of what it means to be a sexed/gendered person.’ This instability is then amplified by the appropriation of the Elvis image – his ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles’ – by different people. Therefore, when one is performing Elvis, they are also performing what Elvis performs.

 

This instability is illustrated in ‘Man, nobody knew what the hell I was, you know?’[28] The pronoun ‘nobody’ references the collective. ‘What’ over ‘who’ expresses the collective’s lack of language to define Elvis; it also dehumanises both Ann and Elvis, expressing that they cannot be defined as people because what defines people in the lens of the dominant ideology – as male or female – are transcended by their blurring of boundaries. This implies negativity surrounding Ann’s identity, manufacturing a taboo and ‘closeting’ the ‘unmarked’ identity. However, ‘what’ still marks Ann and Elvis by signalling its antithesis to the “normalised” ‘who’. Thus, ‘what’ (the ‘unmarked’) are defined as different to the visible.

 

I see Ann’s performance of Elvis as an expression of gender fluidity rather than cross-gendering, due to the unstable gendered definition of Elvis. It is not a ‘marked’ female body performing as a male, but a ‘marked’ female body performing a subject that is biologically ‘marked’ as male but not visually, for he (Elvis) performs other gender and ethnic identities. This layering of identity performance undermines the conventions of the dominant ideology, illustrating that gender identity is beyond binary categorisation. Ann, therefore, can be seen as gender fluid, a phrase that marks her as being able to appropriate any gendered performance at any time; but she is not ‘marked’ as male or female but in relation to them, in ‘a third (or other) category.’[29] Cowan argues that this presents ‘a crises of category itself’[30], for it expresses that binarism is flawed: something can exist between or outside its discourse, as Phelan suggests. Nevertheless, as I argued with Foucault, a subject cannot exist outside of discourse because it will always be defined in relation to it. The dominant ideology will use linguistic labels to frame those who cross-boundaries within binarism.

 

In this essay, I have explored the complexity of ‘markedness’ regarding the case studies of RoosevElvis and Chef. I conclude that ‘unmarked’ is being ‘marked’, for the dominant ideology frames the ‘unmarked’ in relation to the binarism of the ‘marked’. I have discussed this in relation to gender performativity, concluding that Ann performs masculinity (and other identities) through her drag-kinging of Elvis. In Chef, I focused on the ethnic identity of slam poetry and expressed how the body ‘marked’ by language is not always the same as the body ‘marked’ by the performer. This incongruency undermines conventional readings of identity, for it suggests that subjects can cross-boundaries or appropriate various identity components. But I have also expressed that these “boundaries” only exist because of our binary perception. I also touched upon the complicated relationship of language and signifiers, and their part in defining identity – I am encouraged to develop my exploration of this in future work, particularly whether language takes precedence over visual signifiers. In conclusion, I have argued that ‘markedness’ is the qualification of a signifier by a linguistic label, with the signification of the ‘bodily gestures, movements, and styles’ pre-determined by ideology.

 

[1] Judith Butler, 'Body Inscriptions, Performative Subversions', Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1990) p128-141

[2] Sharon Cowan, 'The Elvis We Deserve: The Social Regulation of Sex/Gender and Sexuality Through Cultural Representations of “The King”', Law, Culture, and the Humanities, 6:2 (London: Sage Publications, 2010) p221-244

[3] Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics, trans. By Wade Baskin, 3rd ed. (New York: Philosophical Library Inc, 1959)

[4] Dewantu Dewanti, ‘Semiotic Analysis of Ferdinand de Saussure’s Structuralism on ‘Energen Green Bean’ Advertisement’, (Java: INSTIKI, 2023)

[5] Saussure, ‘Object of Linguistics’, Course in General Linguistics, p7-17 (pp11)

[6] Peggy Phelan, ‘Broken Symmetries; Memory, Sight, Love’, in Unmarked: The Politics of Performance, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2005) p1

[7] Kinga Kozminska, ‘Language and Ideology’, Weiner Slawitischer Almanac, 85:1 (London: Birkbeck University Press, 2020) pp69-91

[8] Kozminska, p79

[9] Butler, p140

[10] Cowan, p233

[11] The Team, p22

[12] The Team, p1

[13] The Team, p9

[14] Ibid

[15] Stephen Greer, 'Chapter 1: In Contemporary British Queer Performance', Contemporary British Queer Performance, 1st ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) p3-33 (p22)

[16] Elaine Aston, 'M/Othering the Self' in An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 1995) pp42-54 (p44)

[17] Michel Foucault, Fearless Speech, 1st ed. (Los Angeles: Semiotext, 2001) pp9-23 (p19)

[18] Mahfouz, Chef, p15-16 [slashes are my own, to convey line breaks]

[19] Elaine Aston, ‘Black Women’, An Introduction to Feminism and Theatre, 1st ed. (London: Routledge, 1995) pp74-88 (p87)

[20] Ibid

[21] Mahfouz, ‘Production Details’, Chef

[22] Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, Chef by Sabrina Mahfouz, (May 2021) [https://oldvic.ac.uk/events-shows/chef-by-sabrina-mahfouz/ - accessed on: 21/12/23]

[23] Kings Cross Theatre, Chef, (February 2022) [https://www.kingsxtheatre.com/panimo-pandemonium-2022/chef – accessed on: 21/12/23)

[24] George, Anna, ‘Slam Poetry – A Link Between Black Feminism and Oral Poetry Traditions’, Intersectional Journal for Intersectional Feminist Studies, 3:2 (Kennesaw: Kennesaw State University Press, 2016) p1-22 (p17)

[25] Mahfouz, p8

[26] Ibid, p1

[27] Cowan, p229

[28] The Team, p1

[29] Cowan, p235

[30] Ibid