Ingo H. Warnke

Ingo H. Warnke is Professor of German Linguistics including Interdisciplinary Linguistics at the University of Bremen ↓

»If language is a tool of communication, it is a radically undirected one.«

Ingo H. Warnke doubts the value of language per se and asks who does exactly what with language where and when. And in which contexts and coinages this happens. And how language can be grasped and thought of as an event. Accordingly, he researches and teaches discourse linguistics, language in contradiction, German language in colonial and postcolonial contexts, and language in urban space. He is currently particularly interested in questions of a linguistics of listening.

In addition to his work in the studio, as he says, he enjoys working in a team, particularly in the field of Contradiction Studies. He is the speaker of the DFG Research Training Group on Contradiction Studies. Constellations, Heuristics, Concepts (GRK 2686), in tandem with Karen Struve, and spokesperson of the University of Bremen’s collaborative research platform Worlds of Contradiction, in tandem with Alisha Heinemann. He is also co-editor of the book series Diskursmuster – Discourse Patterns, Koloniale und Postkoloniale Linguistik, and Contradiction Studies; served as chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg from 2018 to 2025; and is a liaison professor for the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Bremen. Music plays an important role in his work, including when he writes. He often prefers reading philosophical and social-science texts to linguistic ones. Sometimes he wonders whether linguistics is truly necessary and what would happen if it were abolished tomorrow. People would continue to speak and write. Not least because language simply happens.

CV

Education

Studies of German language and literature, music, and education/philosophy (1st state examination U Kassel)

PhD (1993): Wörterbuch zu Thomas Müntzers deutschen Schriften und Briefen [Dictionary of Thomas Müntzer's German Writings and Letters]

Habilitation (1998): Wege zur Kultursprache. Die Polyfunktionalisierung des Deutschen im juridischen Diskurs 1200–1800 [Paths to a Language of Culture. The Polyfunctionalization of German in Juridical Discourse 1200–1800]