Class teaches Potter linguistics

Professor Richard Janda’s class materials include a Harry Potter audiobook, two
Potter movies and a real-life Marauder’s Map from his recent trip to the Wizarding
World of Harry Potter with his daughter.

During the second eight weeks of this semester, Janda will be teaching L210, Language and Harry Potter, a linguistics course studying the Harry Potter books and movies.

“I want to stress that this is a rigorous course ... but if people love something, they’ll want to learn all about it,” Janda said.  

“They’ll actually do more work for a course that seems fun than something that isn’t fun, so they’ll actually learn more this way and work harder.”

Students in the class will analyze the spells and runes in Harry Potter, as well as the differences in translation between the books and movies in other languages, he said.  

One of Rowling’s biggest strengths is her careful choice of character names, Janda said.

For example, Rowling chose the name “Harry Potter” because it is an average English name, and Harry is supposed to sound like “the everyman” who does great things despite his namesake.

“I don’t believe that a name determines your character, but many names do have connotations,” Janda said.  “Names can be like another level of the story.”

Janda said that despite some students’ assumptions, there will be homework, a midterm and a final exam.

Though the Harry Potter class is only eight weeks long, students receive three credits for this course.

The class meets four days a week.

His Harry Potter class is similar to his already established course L210, Language and Lord of the Rings, which he will teach for the 12th time this summer.

Linguistics student Anna Leggins has taken the Lord of the Rings class and was a member of the experimental Harry Potter class, which was offered last spring.

“He’s not only knowledgeable on linguistic subjects, but he’s genuinely interested in it, and it comes through in his teaching,” Leggins said. “It makes the subject that much more interesting when the professor is passionate about what they are teaching.”

Janda is a professor, a linguist, a father and a fantasy enthusiast.

He speaks Quebec French, Spanish and German, and he has studied some Italian, Dutch, Latin and Old English.

He said he was inspired to teach the Harry Potter class by his daughter, who started reading the books when she was 8-years-old.  

“Partly, my love for Harry Potter is seeing what it did for my daughter,” Janda said.
”That made me see, well, if this can make a child want to read and get to be an
advanced reader, that’s worth using to teach, and confirmed my belief that this was a good way to go.”

Janda said the reason the books and courses based on those books are so popular is because their authors created a world that people would want to live in.

“It’s having depth,” Janda said. “When Tolkien says, ‘They approached a staircase and they could see that the sidewall had carvings,’ you know that Tolkien has also thought about what’s on the other side that you can’t see.”

According to Janda, his Lord of the Rings class has been one of the most popular courses in the department.

He had to expand the Harry Potter class from 35 students to 40, and all the spots but one have already been taken.

Colleague and friend Brian Joseph said he has known Janda for 35 years. He worked with Janda at Ohio State University and was best man at Janda’s wedding. The two also co-edited a linguistics book called “The Handbook of Historical Linguistics.”

“He puts a tremendous amount of effort into his teaching, and he seeks out a lot of material from popular culture that will grab students’ attention,” Joseph said. “It’s never entertainment just for the sake of entertainment, there’s always a point to what he’s doing.”

Janda said that he hopes to write a textbook on the linguistics of “Lord and the Rings,” a project he has already started to work on.

“It’s important for everyone to be sensitive to language issues,” Janda said. “It’s a great subject because it opens your mind up to how there can be a mixture of what’s systematic and what seems kind of random.”