Bimbola Oluwafunlola Idowu-Faith

Hypertext has been identified as the most fundamental change in textual culture since the Gutenberg. Scholars believe that the textual changes hypertext enacts are mostly observable in hyperfiction texts whose authors exploit the plasticity of the digital media space for various forms of experimentations that echo critical theorists' textual projections and reconfigure the notions of the text, how it is written, as well as how it is read. As much as hypertext scholars have variously theorized the nature and structure of hypertext, little attention has been paid to the study and description of hyperfiction. This stylistic study addresses this neglect by employing Systemic Linguistics, Postmodern Literary Theory, and insights from Applied Media Aesthetics/Multimodal Semiotics in examining language, (hyper)textuality, and style in selected electronic literature in order to reveal how the texts’ digital environments as well as technological affordances in the digital media space re[con]figure text and re[de]fine writing and reading.