Shall we dance?

Abstract This paper looks at the way in which linguistics has been used in the analysis of identity and suggests that we might now be able to go beyond linguistics and do a wider analysis of identity using performance. I look at race and sex/gender in the context of sexuality and, as a part of my argument, I suggest that processes of identification should not be analyzed as separable but rather as interlocking elements, making up the complete human being. At the end of this mainly theoretical piece, I begin to apply my theory, looking at the work of two of my doctoral research project participants, Patience Agbabi and Zahid Dar, performers of pieces which raise a number of questions about sexuality, performance and identification processes.