Pragmatic is a word that describes a way of thinking and behaving. A person who is pragmatic is concerned with results and consequences, rather than what should or could be. They act in ways that will get them the best possible outcome. A pragmatic person will weigh the pros and cons of different options before deciding what to do. This way, they can avoid making a big mistake.
A major area of study in pragmatics is language and communication. It’s important to note that this field differs from semantics, syntax, and semiotics in that the latter three focus on the rules that determine the literal meaning of linguistic expressions. Pragmatics, on the other hand, focuses on how these expressions are used and how they’re understood by speakers in specific situations.
For example, a gesture that’s completely acceptable in the United States may be considered highly offensive in Greece. This is because the culture’s pragmatic norms differ. This also applies to the differences between how children learn a language, as well as how adults develop their understanding of the world around them.
The field of pragmatism emerged in the 1870s among a group of Harvard-educated men who gathered for informal philosophical discussions in Cambridge, MA. Its early proponents included Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Peirce was a logician and mathematician, while James was a psychologist and moralist armed with a medical degree.
These early pragmatists defined truth in terms of a belief’s successful working. Crudely, they believed that truth was “what works.” More formally, they saw it as the limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific beliefs. This approach is known as instrumentalist pragmatism, and it was the forerunner of John Dewey’s pragmatist school.
Today, pragmatics is an established and respected academic field. It’s an integral part of the study of human language, and it includes subfields like Speech Act Theory, which examines how we use our words to carry out actions. It also encompasses reference resolution, a process that helps computer systems understand how to properly use contextual information when processing linguistic data.
Another major pragmatics field is computational pragmatics, which focuses on how humans can communicate their intentions to computers so that they can better emulate our ability to process and interpret complex information. For example, it’s critical for a computer to know what it means when you say that a particular item is the same as another object, so the system can properly identify what you mean by referring to its context.
Computational pragmatics is also important for the field of natural language processing, which is one of the cornerstones of artificial intelligence. In fact, without computational pragmatics, many of the tasks that are currently being automated with machine learning and deep neural networks wouldn’t be feasible. It’s vital for applications like automatic spelling correction and translation of texts between languages. In addition, this approach to AI will help improve the effectiveness of robots and machines in performing real-world tasks.
