Pragmatic is a word that is often used in philosophical contexts to describe a philosophy of action or interaction that stresses the importance of results over presuppositions. In particular, pragmatism is characterized by an approach to truth that relies on the fact that stuff really exists independent of one’s perspective — things like physical objects, ideas, and even mathematical objects — and that this stuff has a real effect on reality.
As a philosophical movement, pragmatics has taken on a variety of forms. In the early 1870s, members of the Metaphysical Club, a group of Harvard-educated men who met for informal philosophical discussions in Cambridge, Massachusetts, took up the pragmatic view of truth. The group included proto-pragmatist Chauncey Wright, future 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 and mathematician, and William James (1842-1910), a psychologist and moralist with a medical degree.
These two major figures loomed large over American intellectual life for more than a decade. Their work, however, was quickly eclipsed by the rigorous import of Moore, Russell, Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle. By the 1940s, pragmatism had lost its momentum and prestige.
Although a philosophical movement, pragmatics is now largely a linguistic and psychological discipline. Its practitioners divide into several different categories, based on their view of the nature of pragmatic phenomena. One general tendency is that of seeing pragmatics, much in Grice’s vein, as a philosophical project; another is to concentrate on its interaction with grammar; and still a third is to view pragmatics as an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation.
Among the most important issues in pragmatics is how to distinguish between linguistic and extra-linguistic context. The linguistic context of an utterance includes its preceding and following utterances, its grammatical structure and meaning, its lexical content (including the use of idioms), and any other contextual features that may affect its meaning. Extra-linguistic contexts include the cultural environment in which an utterance is uttered and the participants’ knowledge and expectations in that context.
The relationship between semantics, syntax, and pragmatics is a complex one. Semantics examines the actual objects or ideas to which words refer, while syntax focuses on relationships between signs. Pragmatics attempts to bridge the gap between semantics and syntax, concentrating on the way in which the concepts referred to are used and understood. Pragmatics also investigates the effects of various linguistic features on the truth and falsity of propositions. The study of pragmatics has many practical applications. For example, the linguistic pragmatics of computer programming involves the design of software that can interpret human intentions as accurately as possible and respond accordingly. This technology, known as natural language processing, is integral to the science of artificial intelligence, which aims to build computers that can perform human tasks. Other applications of pragmatics include communication between cultures, the use of humor in conversation, and parliamentary debates.
