Hartmut Haberland

Hartmut Haberland

Hartmut Haberland (born February 3, 1948 in Hanover, Germany) was a professor at Roskilde University in Denmark. In 1977, he founded the Journal of Pragmatics together with Jacob Mey. Currently, he is an editor of Pragmatics and Society together with Mey (Chief editor), Hermine Penz and Hans Jørgen Ladegaard, and an editor of Acta Linguistica Hafniensia, the journal of the Linguistic Circle of Copenhagen together with Lars Heltoft, Janus Mortensen, Sune Sønderberg Mortensen und Peter Juul Nielsen.

The first widely known work by Haberland was a textbook, entitled "Soziologie + Linguistik. Die schlechte Aufhebung sozialer Ungleichheit durch Sprache" (Hager, Haberland, & Paris, 1973). This book was used at a number of universities in Europe for several years. The book was successful in establishing a point of view based on sociology in the study of language.

The launching of the Journal of Pragmatics (with co-editor Jacob L. Mey) was a major achievement, because the journal aimed at the integration of linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, sociology, psychology, etc. Thus it militated against the Chomskian brand of linguistics which eschewed pragmatics or other aspects of language use confining them to a wastebasket (The Journal of Pragmatics did not take this garbage from the wastebasket to recycle it, but thought that language use in itself deserved being studied systematically). In fact, many seminal articles were published there, among which contributions by Asa Kasher, Raymond Gibbs, Frans van Eemeren and R Grootendorst, Yan Huang, Alessandro Ferrara, Mira Ariel, Rachel Giora, Sarah Blackwell, Alessandro Capone, Neal Norrick, Gunter Kress, Theodossia Pavlidou, Sophia Marmaridou, Richard Janney, Jef Verschueren, Johan van der Auwera, Sachiko Ide.

Haberland has also done important work in the area of language contact and has expressed his views on the dangers of globalization, which has the effect of swallowing cultures as well as some of the domains of certain languages. In particular, he studied the process whereby English came to have such an influence on the Danish language that various areas of the lexicon were phagocytized by the English language, the latter language being in a position of power. Influenced by Gramsci's (Gramsci, 1992–6) ideas on power and ideology. Haberland launched the idea that hegemony (Gramsci, 1992–6) plays a role in the relationship between languages and determines that in the relationship there is a loser and a winner.

Career

Haberland graduated from Freie Universität Berlin in 1971. After teaching at Freie Universität Berlin he took a job at Roskilde University in 1974, first as an Associate Professor and then as a Senior Reader. Since 2012, he was professor of German language and the sociolinguistics of globalisation. He retired in 2018.

Haberland taught in Berlin (Freie Universität) 1972-1974, and in Roskilde since 1974 (in Düsseldorf 1979-1980). He was a guest professor, researcher or summer school professor in Athens (1993), Soka (Japan) (1995), Beijing (1996), Guangzhou (2006), Osaka (2009) and Hong Kong (2010).

Bibliography

• Gramsci, A. (1992–6). Prison notebooks, I-II. Ed. and trans. J. A. Buttigieg (Trans. A. Callari. European perspectives: A series in social thought and cultural criticism). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
• Hager, F., Haberland, H., & Paris, R. (1973). Soziologie + Linguistik. Die schlechte Aufhebung sozialer Ungleichheit durch Sprache. Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler.