Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English

Committee Director

Marc Ouellette

Committee Member

Daniel Richards

Committee Member

Amy Lindstrom

Committee Member

Janet Davis

Abstract

This project is an exploration of the deeply insider language of American circus and identifies meaningful patterns and connections between language, identity, and community. Drawing upon the theoretical lenses of cultural studies and community of practice, the study offers a thorough examination of how circus people use insider language for business, performance, and community purposes that enhance belonging, share knowledge, gatekeep, and protect their group identity.

The research employs a mixed-methods, scaffolded design that integrates both qualitative and quantitative data approaches, examining the cultural importance of circus language as written and spoken by the insider community. The design begins with archival collection and corpora data analysis, using coding, software, and analysis to identify patterns and draw contexts from documented glossaries (48 total glossaries for 5,921 total words and phrases) and circus language samples (400 artifacts collected for 6,465 total words and phrases). These findings form the foundation for subsequent human subject research phase(s), which include an online survey and semi-structured interviews. Finally, multi-site observation of the community provides real-time contextual data to deepen insights from earlier phases of the study. Each phase purposely scaffolds the next, allowing for a comprehensive understanding of lived experience and creating a cohesive data-set. The project design and methods are necessarily broad: the complexity of circus culture, identity, and a substantial lexicon of words and phrases cannot be meaningfully addressed through a single lens.

Ultimately, this dissertation demonstrates that circus language is more than communication, and it is often how a community recognizes itself in each other, signals belonging and shared identity, and controls outsider participation at varying levels of acceptance. The circus community has long acknowledged the importance of its language, and this study recognizes its enduring power from traditional tent-shows to Cirque du Soleil, while critically examining the lasting cultural contribution both to the insider community and within American popular culture.

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DOI

https://doi.org/10.25777/hm8e-3b11

ISBN

9798197810212

ORCID

0000-0003-1996-7732

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