Pragmatic means dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical considerations rather than on theory. A person who is pragmatic is someone who, for instance, doesn’t expect a four-year-old to receive a unicorn at her birthday party. It’s a bit of a contrast to someone who is idealistic, who tends to have a grand vision of how a situation should play out and is more concerned with an idea than the reality of it.

The word pragmatic derives from Greek pragma, meaning “deed.” The word was originally used to describe philosophers and politicians who were concerned with the real-world application of their ideas, rather than the abstract notions behind those ideas. Today, it’s still a useful term to describe a philosophy that stresses the best results possible from a given situation.

A central concept in pragmatics is that language is inherently ambiguous, and understanding context can help disambiguate meaning and facilitate everyday communication. This is why it’s so important to understand how the concepts of semantics, syntax, and pragmatics work together to form a language.

Semantics:

The study of the relationship between the meaning of words and the propositions they express. This involves the use of stable linguistic features and context-sensitive extralinguistic information in order to determine what a particular sentence or phrase actually means. Semantics is usually divided into three main subfields: semantic semantics, syntactic semantics, and pragmatic semantics.

Syntax:

The grammatical rules that determine how words are combined to form sentences. This is often referred to as sentence structure, and is one of the core elements of language. Syntax is the most commonly taught branch of linguistics, and is also an integral part of grammar.

Pragmatics:

The field of study that focuses on how people use language in the context of dialogue and life, rather than as an isolated system of rules. This is an interdisciplinary field that draws from the fields of linguistics, philosophy, and sociology.

It is generally agreed upon that the fundamental goal of pragmatics is to communicate with one another in a clear and effective manner. It is also agreed that this can be achieved through the cooperative principle, which was formulated by the late philosopher of language Paul Grice. The cooperative principle consists of four general pragmatic principles that seem to apply in most situations and across languages.

Pragmatics is sometimes divided into several different branches, including speech act theory, conversational implicature, and the theory of denotation. Some authors view pragmatics as a philosophical project in the tradition of Grice; others focus on its interaction with grammar; and yet others treat it as an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation.

Ultimately, the distinction between semantics and pragmatics lies in the different types of significance that are attached to a particular utterance. Semantics deals with the conventional or literal meaning of a phrase; pragmatics focuses on the additional senses and implications that may be generated by context.