ELANG 535 COURSE SYLLABUS

ELANG 535 * LANGUAGE & LITERATURE
Section 001 * Summer 2009 * 3 credit hours
B140 JFSB * 1:00-3:50 p.m. T/Th

PROFESSOR: Cynthia L. Hallen
OFFICE HOURS: W 9:30-11:30 a.m. by appointment
OFFICE: 4073 JFSB
CONTACT: Cynthia_Hallen@byu.edu; 422-2020


PREREQUISITE: ELANG 223 or LING 330 required.

BRIEF COURSE DESCRIPTION: Welcome to ELANG 535. This course invites students to read carefully, write intensively, think deeply, and speak thoughtfully as they study the relationships between language and literature, with a main focus on English texts in the Indo-European bard tradition and a secondary focus on philology across cultures through translation. The emphasis in the course is on phonological, morphological, syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of English in literary works.

CLASSROOM PROCEDURES: Class attendance and participation are mandatory in order to build a community of learning together. Each student should arrange for a least one office consultation with Dr. Hallen. This course requires about six hours of class work and twelve hours of homework each week. The class periods will feature a combination of demonstrations, discussions, exercises, and lectures. Assignments and assessments will consist of activities designed to evaluate your knowledge and abilities according to the learning outcomes. This course will have materials available by email, on the Internet, and through Blackboard.

COURSE POLICIES AND ETIQUETTE: The course is conducted in compliance with Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action regulations. If you have any special classroom needs, please let Dr. Hallen know. This syllabus is subject to minor revisions throughout the semester. The first injunction of the BYU Honor Code is the call to be honest. Students come to the university not only to improve their minds, gain knowledge, and develop career skills, but also to practice social skills appropriate for professional and academic settings: attention; courtesy; respect; patience; cheerfulness; integrity.

TEACHER CREDENTIALS: Dr. Hallen has a BA in English from BYU, an MA in TESOL from BYU, and a Ph.D. degree in Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English from the University of Arizona. She worked for the LDS Church translation department on scripture tools: a lexicon of words in the Triple Combination; and an exegesis of language features in 3 Nephi. She began teaching at BYU in 1991. She is presently the chief editor of the Emily Dickinson Lexicon.

GENERAL COURSE PURPOSES: To read, analyze, and create literary texts using language features such as sound patterns, etymologies, word order variations, word pairs, rhetorical figures, cognitive linguistics, corpus linguistics, and the relationship between text and context.
REQUIRED TEXTS AND OTHER MATERIALS:
Becker, Alton L. (A. L.) Beyond Translation: Essays toward a Modern Philology. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan, 2000.

Watkins, Calvert. How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics. Oxford University Press, 2001.

READING SCHEDULE:

Week Day Date Homework & Class Discussion Becker Watkins
1 T 23-Jun 1. Indo-European Comparative Poetics pp. 3-93
1 Th 25-Jun 2. Text Building in Javanese pp. 1-87
2 T 30-Jun 3. Indo-European Case Studies pp. 97-193
2 Th 2-Jul 4. Some Burmese Figures pp. 185-258
3 T 7-Jul 5. The Strophic Style pp. 197-264
3 Th 9-Jul 6. Learning Malay pp. 261-294
4 T 14-Jul 7. How to Kill a Dragon: Basic Formula pp. 297-438
4 Th 16-Jul 8. Translating Emerson into Old Javanese pp. 297-330
5 T 21-Jul 9. Dragons and Dragon-Slayers pp. 441-468
5 Th 23-Jul 10. Music and Language pp. 333-364
6 T 28-Jul 11. From Myth to Epic pp. 471-515
6 Th 30-Jul 12. A Place for Particularity pp. 367-426
7 T 4-Aug 13. From Myth to Charm pp. 519-544
7 Th 6-Aug 14. Afterwords pp. 429-431
8 T 11-Aug Reading Day
8 Th 13-Aug Final Exam, 7:00 - 8:50 a.m. B140 JFSB



COURSE LEARNING OUTCOMES:
· Carefully read and discuss philological principles in How to Kill a Dragon (HKD) by Calvert Watkins and Beyond Translation (BT) by Alton Becker.
· Analyze literary texts using Watkins’ Indo-European poetic formulas, including simple and complex figures: quantifiers, qualifiers, kennings, and merisms (HKD 41-49).
· Analyze literary texts using Becker’s philological criticism, including contextual relations: structural, generic, medial, interpersonal, referential, and silential (BT 186).
· Analyze literary texts using the online corpus of Noah Webster’s 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language (ADEL at edl.byu.edu).
· Create literary texts using language features from Becker, Watkins, and other resources.
STUDENT LEARNING GOALS: Make a couple of goals for your learning in the course.
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SUCCESS: Students who do well in my class . . .
· Read the assigned material before class. Bring thoughtful questions to class for discussion. Take notes during class discussions and while completing reading assignments.
· Check email often for announcements and assignment refinements. Use the syllabus to evaluate their progress throughout the course. Refer to the assignment due dates, descriptions, and evaluation criteria often.
· Get the name and phone number of a classmate to contact for help and fellowship:
_____________________________________________________________________

GRADING PROCEDURES: Students earn grades; the instructor does not “give” grades. The evaluation is based on individual effort, not on competitive comparisons. Assignments are due at or before the beginning of class unless otherwise indicated. Assignments turned in late will lose points. Letter grades are based on this breakdown:

A+ 100 points or more C 74-78
A 94-99 C- 70-73
A- 90-93 D+ 69
B+ 89 D 64-68
B 84-88 D- 60-63
B- 80-83 E 59 or less
C+ 79 UW I



ASSESSMENT BREAKDOWN: We have five main learning activities for a total of 100 percentage points:

1 Reading and Discussion 26
2 Watkins Analysis and Blog Posting 13
3 Becker Analysis and Blog Posting 13
4 Webster Analysis and EDL Posting 26
5 Text Creation and Presentation 22


1. Reading and Discussion. Students will receive one full percentage point for completing the assigned reading before class and one full percentage point for active participation for the entire class block. Points not available for partial reading; neither are points available for arriving late, leaving early, or slipping out in the middle.
2. Watkins Analysis and Blog Posting. For each reading assignment in the Watkins book, students will write a 2-3 page language analysis of a literary text. They will post it in the class blogspot before class and bring a paper copy to class for mark-up.
3. Becker Analysis and Blog Posting. For each reading assignment in the Becker book, students will write a 2-3 page language analysis of a literary text. They will post it in the class blogspot before class and bring a paper copy to class for mark-up.
4. Webster Analysis and EDL Posting. For the term project, students will analyze 13 words in a Dickinson poem, revising definitions as contributors to the Emily Dickinson Lexicon at ERLINK "http://edl.byu.edu" http://edl.byu.edu by using the online edition of Webster’s 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language.
5. Text Creation and Presentation. For the final examination, students will use language figures and linguistic details to write an original 10 page literary text and share a portion of it with class members in an oral presentation. Students will provide a copy of the text on paper and post a copy in the class website. Each student will have 20 minutes to present and five minutes for questions. You may invite family, friends, roommates, teachers, and others to attend the final exam on Thursday, August 13, from 7-8:50 a.m. in B140 JFSB.

OPTIONAL RESOURCES:

The Emily Dickinson Lexicon website. Cynthia L. Hallen, ed. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University, 2007. This website defines words from Dickinson’s poems and entries from Noah Webster’s 1844 American Dictionary of the English Language. http://edl.byu.edu/.

Language and Literature: Journal of the Poetics and Linguistics Association (and other journals via EBSCO search in Modern Language Association online bibliography).

The Scriptures: CD-ROM Edition 1.1. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2005. This is a software program with the King James Version of the Bible in English, Hebrew, and Greek.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Mary Louise Pratt. Linguistics for Students of Literature. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1980.

Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Humanities Reference or online at www.bartelby.com.