Current active course description (last updated 2025/26)
Language Science and Language Art
SP236L
Current active course description (last updated 2025/26)

Language Science and Language Art

SP236L
Discover how the structure of language, communicative processes, bodily signalling and memory shape play, poetry, and narrative, and give rise to poetic effects, including meter, rhyme, and metaphor.
Language is a raw material for certain kinds of human play and art, from the invention of sound symbolic words and language games, to the sophisticated verse and narrative forms of epic poetry. This course introduces the study linguistic poetics and semiotics articulated by the Russian linguist and literary scholar Roman Jakobson, and follows the main lines of its development and interaction with other approaches in Europe and the US to the present day, examining the nature of literary language and linguistic form, performance, figures of language (e.g. rhyme, alliteration, parallelism), figures of thought (e.g. irony, metonymy, metaphor), the relation between meter and song, and the linguist structure of narrative. With its empirical focus on English, this course will place the linguistic study of language art within the broader context of the humanities, and draw on findings in the cognitive and communication sciences, anthropology and biology, to probe the nature of language play and language art.
Acceptance into the Bachelor of English program or English One-Year program with adequate course progression (at least 45 ECTS passed). The course is also open to international exchange students at Nord University.
Higher Education Entrance Qualification and/or international exchange student status at Nord University.

KNOWLEDGE

The student

  • has knowledge of how to explain the role of linguistic structure, inference, signalling, and embodied memory in forms of play and art that use language as raw material
  • has knowledge of how to explain figures of language (e.g. rhyme, parallelism), figures of thought (e.g. irony, metaphor), verse, and narrative structure using above concepts
  • has knowledge of how to account for historical and present-day interactions between linguistic and literary thought

SKILLS

The student

  • can scan a metrical poem and identify principal metrical variations
  • can analyze poetic and semiotic effects in literary texts and performances
  • can locate and evaluate scholarly sources for linguistic study of literary language
  • can discuss the linguistic study of literary language using appropriate concepts and terminology
  • can update and broaden one's knowledge of the linguistic study of literary language

GENERAL COMPETENCIES

The student

  • can reflect on and apply concepts from linguistic study of literary language to previously unencountered texts and performances
  • can critically evaluate discussions in the media bearing on the nature of the interaction between language, play and art
  • can communicate the relevance of the linguistically informed study of language play and language art to education, life skills, democratic participation, and sustainable social development in our own time
No costs beyond semester fee and course books.
Elective
Campus teaching, 12 weeks, 4 hours per week of combined lecture and group work. The teaching will be part lectures, part seminars, with follow-up activities on Canvas where applicable.
Study programmes are evaluated annually and students participate in course evaluations (midterm and end-of-term). Evaluations occur as a part of the university's quality control system.

Compound assesment (SV)

Obligatory participation (OD) 80 %, approved / not approved. Compulsory participation must be approved to receive the final grade.

Portfolio (MA) - consisting of 5 written texts:

  1. form and communication
  2. semiotics
  3. poetics
  4. narrative and performance
  5. choice of semiotics or poetics

The portfolio counts 100 % of the total grade, assessed A-F

All support materials

Generating an answer using ChatGPT or similar artificial intelligence and submitting it wholly or partially as one's own answer is considered cheating

Students should have a solid basis in grammar, pragmatics and phonetics, e.g. SP170L English Language and Linguistics, or equivalent, and have completed survey courses on British and American literature, e.g. SP171L British Studies, and SP172L American Studies.
Course language
English
Credits
10
Study location
Bodø
Responsible faculty
The Faculty of Education and Arts
Course coordinator
Employee photo: Patrik Anders Bye
Associate Professor

Patrik Anders Bye

patrik.bye@nord.no