The Case That Genre Is Irrelevant in Non-Traditional Authorship Attribution Studies

This chapter puts forth the antithesis of the contention that genre must be controlled for in non-traditional authorship attribution studies. It is short because the argument of irrelevancy is not well represented in the literature. The position that an author’s style is consistent over genres is discussed. Andrew Morton’s Cusum technique and John Baker’s PACE technique both claim that genre is irrelevant in their authorship attribution studies. There is a discussion of scholars including Rothman, Péter and Jawerbaum, and Stover and Kestemont who recognize the problem of mixed genres but choose to ignore it. The case for function words as stylistic traits that make genre irrelevant is put forth.