The concept of performance has a dual function in sociolinguistic inquiry: among scholars interested in verbal art, it has figured centrally as a heightened discourse style that invites evaluation of its own production, while for sociolinguists concerned with language and identity, it is a way of understanding speech as a resource for the construction of the self. Yet these two uses of performance are not mutually exclusive; indeed, in many cases they may be mutually reinforcing.

This paper examines the linked issues of performance and identity within the context of science fiction role-playing games, a form of play that blends narrative and dramatic performance. Based on data collected at a science fiction convention in Texas in 1999, the analysis concentrates on how, within a single live-action role-playing game, participants linguistically negotiate and manipulate boundaries at multiple levels: between the game world and the real world; between different discursive activities within the game world; and between different identity positions as they become interactionally salient. I focus in particular on ideologically constructed speech styles as tools for performance in both senses of the term. The selection and performance of particular accents ties the game both intertextually to previous enactments of the fantastic and ideologically to specific racialized, ethnicized, and gendered categories. Such stylized speech, like other kinds of linguistic representation documented by researchers, demonstrates the close association between poetic discourse and the production of social identity through language.