Deconstructing Language Borders through the Hybrid. A Topical Approach to Margaret Atwood’s Dark Lady

Abstract

Abstract Starting from the premise that cultures assume myriads of foreign elements, alterities, and differences, this paper analyses a phenomenon that becomes a conscious and an intentional one, namely language hybridity. Our purpose is to give thoughtful attention to certain instances of hybridity perceived at the syntactic, semantic, and lexical levels. Since language users make their choice in any situational context, we witness a great degree of linguistic blending: e. g. the borrowing of words and phrases becomes tied to new ways of making meaning. Additionally, we face a dynamic increase of mixed language registers, styles, and voices that form a complex linguistic repertoire in a literary work. For exemplification, we will analyse Margaret Atwood’s experimentations across genre and linguistic boundaries encountered in her short story Dark Lady, integral part of the short fiction collection Stone Mattress. Nine Wicked Tales (2014). This narrative is characterized by a mixture of heterogeneous elements: hybrid phrases created as a result of borrowing words, elevated language (sprinkled with widely known Latin sayings), and alteration of idioms by one-word substitution. Hybridity becomes a way through which Margaret Atwood deconstructs language borders. In Dark Lady, the Canadian writer shows that hybridity stimulates innovation since the individual is allowed to move freely between spaces of meaning.