Jacob L. Mey


Jacob Louis Mey was a Dutch-born Danish professor of linguistics, specializing in pragmatics. He was professor emeritus in the Institute of Language and Communication at the University of Southern Denmark, after retiring in 1996.

Career

Mey received his PhD in Linguistics from the University of Copenhagen in 1960, supervised by Louis Hjelmslev. He has also worked at the University of Oslo, the University of Texas at Austin, Georgetown University, Yale University, Tsukuba University, The National Language Research Institute, Tokyo, Northwestern University, the City University of Hong Kong, the University of Frankfurt, Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Universidade de Brasília, the University of Haifa and Haifa Technion, Södertörn University College, and Örebro University.
Until 2010, he was chief editor of the Journal of Pragmatics, which he founded in 1977 with Hartmut Haberland. He was chief editor of RASK, the international journal of language and communication, and one of the founding editors of Pragmatics & Society.
Mey originated the notion of the pragmeme.
In 1992 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Zaragoza.
In 2017, Elsevier Publishers established the Jacob L. Mey and Hartmut Haberland Early Career Award in recognition of the Journal of Pragmatics’ founding editors’ support for young scholars.
On 30 October 2021, Jacob L. Mey received the IPrA Award for Foundational Service in the Field of Pragmatics from the International Pragmatics Association.

Personal life and death

Mey had a daughter from his first marriage with Kari Lothe. He was married to Inger Mey from 1965; they had five children.
Mey died in Austin, Texas on 10 February 2023, at the age of 96.

Selected works

  • Mey, Jacob L. Pragmalinguistics: Theory and Practice Rasmus Rask Studies in Pragmatic Linguistics 1.
  • Mey, Jacob L. Whose Language? A Study in Linguistic Pragmatics Pragmatics & Beyond Companion Series 3.
  • Mey, Jacob L. Pragmatics: An Introduction . 2nd ed.
  • Gorayska, Barbara, and Jacob L. Mey. Cognitive technology. Springer London, 1996.
  • Mey, Jacob L. Concise Encyclopedia of Pragmatics
  • Mey, Jacob L. When Voices Clash: A Study in Literary Pragmatics Trends in Linguistics 115.
  • Mey, Jacob L. and István Kecskés. Intention, Common Ground and the Egocentric Speaker-Hearer Mouton Series in Pragmatics 4.