Pragmatic is a philosophical viewpoint that emphasizes how and when words are used. It is a philosophy that looks at how words are interpreted in the context of specific social situations. It is important to know how a person uses language in order to understand them.
Despite the fact that a person may speak clearly and use correct grammar, his or her communication can still be misinterpreted. This is because the meaning of a word may be interpreted differently depending on the situation in which it is used. Understanding pragmatics helps people to better interpret others’ messages and it can help them to communicate more effectively.
The pragmatic approach to philosophy originated in the early 1870s from discussions at a so-called “Metaphysical Club” (a group of Harvard-educated men) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The members included proto-positivist Chauncey Wright (1830-1875), Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935), and two then-fledgling philosophers who went on to become the first self-conscious pragmatists: Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), a logician, mathematician, and scientist, and William James (1842-1910), a psychologist and moralist armed with a medical degree.
After Charles Peirce and William James, the pragmatist movement enjoyed considerable momentum through the work of John Dewey (1859-1952), who was a professor at the University of Chicago, and sociologist George Herbert Mead (1863-1931). Dewey’s writings are viewed as pragmatism’s greatest contribution to American intellectual life during his lifetime.
But pragmatism began to lose its luster after the 1940s, when analytic philosophy gained momentum and supplanted pragmatism’s position in most Anglo-American philosophy departments. Analytic philosophers such as Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), and Hans Reichenbach (1891-1953) showed some enthusiasm for pragmatism but they did not embrace it fully.
Today, the philosophy of pragmatism continues to be an important intellectual trend in many parts of the world. For example, in South America and Scandinavia, pragmatism has developed vibrant research networks. It also has a strong presence in the philosophy of science and education.
The pragmatist view is that, when interpreting a concept, one must consider its effects and practical references in addition to its formal definition. It is only through the latter that we are able to determine its true value and meaning.
The study of pragmatics is an important component of the study of a particular language, as it explains how the structure and meaning of a particular language changes depending on the social and cultural environment in which it is used. In the classroom, teachers can incorporate lessons on pragmatics into their current curriculum or create new lessons to help students become more aware of how and when they use different languages. The lessons might be focused on language functions such as greetings, requests, complaints, invitations, and apologies. They might also be focused on the interaction of home and target cultures or the interaction between the sexes.
