In this article the academic and literary genres of the writer Joan Hambidge is researched by means of a linguistic analysis in order to describe the lingual liminal space of her idiolect. To this end, two novels and a PhD thesis were...
moreIn this article the academic and literary genres of the writer Joan Hambidge is researched by means of a linguistic analysis in order to describe the lingual liminal space of her idiolect. To this end, two novels and a PhD thesis were used a central text. From the literature the unique voice of Hambidge is evident. The concepts of genre and liminality were relevant to this study from a theoretical framework. The stylometric analysis, where certain parts of speech and readability was investigated, as well as the more qualitative stylistic analysis proved the liminality between the academic and literary writing style of the author. The writer consistently uses language in the academic text which would be expected in a literary text. The use of prepositions and discourse markers correspond in a statistically significant manner between the two novels. However, the use of prepositions and discourse markers does not agree significantly when the PhD and the two novels are compared. But the use of prepositions and discourse markers diff er between die PhD and the two novels. In terms of pronouns the use is consistent over the text. Especially on a stylistic level the informal and references to the external the academic text becomes unique and it could be considered to be an academic meta-novel.
