230215 Linguistics in Outer Space (BS) (SoSe 2016)

A degree in Linguistics might be the beginning of a glamorous career in the film or games industry: linguists have been called upon to work as dialect coaches for elves and other creatures in Lord of the Rings, they create alien languages like Klingon for StarTrek or Dothrakifor Game of Thrones, or they come up with gadgets like the Babelfish, an automatic translator. Some linguists even write Science Fiction novels: there is one in which linguists rule the world!
This course will take you where no linguist has gone before: we will investigate the serious linguistic aspects related to selected Science Fiction and Fantasy films, TV series, novels and/or games, depending on your preferences. We will begin by exploring some of the most elaborate and well-known fictional languages which have sparked a cult following, namely Klingon in Star Trek and the languages created by J.R.R. Tolkien for The Lord of the Rings. You are welcome to indicate your own area of interest; the final decision on the range of topics will be taken by the course participants. Possible topics could be:
• the representation of machine translation and automatic speech processing in Science Fiction films such as Star Trek
• artificial intelligence and cyborgs in Ghost in the Shell
• hieroglyphs and other writing systems in Stargate
• non-figurative alien languages in China Miéville’s Embassytown
• multilingualism and mixed languages in Firefly
• alien language acquisition in Native Tongue by Suzette Haden Elgin
• human and nonhuman pragmatics: Data and Seven of Nine in Star Trek
• …

Literaturangaben

Adams, Michael (ed.) (2011), From Elvish to Klingon: Exploring Invented Languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hanley, Richard (1997), Is Data Human? The Metaphysicsof Star Trek. London: Boxtree.
Hostetter, Carl F. (2007), “TolkenianLinguistics: The First FiftyYears.”TolkienStudies 4: 1-46.
Klingon Language Institute: www.kli.org
Okrand, Marc (1992),The Klingon Dictionary. New York: Simon & Schuster. (German online version: http://seekay.eidoloskop.com/klingon/)
Shippey, Tom (2003), The Road to Middle-Earth. Houghton Mifflin.
The Language Construction Kit by Mark Rosenfelder: http://www.zompist.com/kit.html.