Pragmatic is a word that describes an approach or attitude that’s realistic and practical, as opposed to idealistic. It’s often used to describe people who take a middle of the road approach in their work or politics, or in describing a solution that is more likely to succeed than one that’s overly optimistic. The term pragmatic comes from the Greek word pragma, meaning “deed,” and it’s used to refer to actions that make sense in a real-world context.
The field of linguistic pragmatics is the study of how different contextual features can influence what a person says. It’s considered a subfield of semantics, with the main difference being that linguistic pragmatics is less concerned with the semantic properties of words and sentences, and more with their usage in a specific situation. The field also examines the influence that a speaker’s intentions and goals have on the use of their language.
There are several different approaches to the field of linguistic pragmatics. One of the most basic is called “semantic pragmatics,” which considers how an utterance’s semantic content can vary depending on the context in which it’s uttered. This is an important part of a lot of everyday communication, and it’s the basis for many of the concepts that characterize pragmatics.
Another approach is known as ‘near-side pragmatics,’ which is the study of the effects that contextual features have on what an utterance is intended to communicate. The concept of near-side pragmatics is closely linked with Grice’s theory of conversation, and it’s an essential aspect of the modern approach to pragmatics. It’s considered the most logical form of pragmatics, and it’s the most widely accepted model in contemporary philosophy.
Other forms of pragmatics are called ‘far-side pragmatics,’ and they examine the effect that context has on an utterance beyond what is expressed by the words themselves. The concepts of far-side pragmatics are a little more difficult to pin down, but they’re still central to the field of pragmatics.
Examples of far-side pragmatics include speech act theory, which analyzes the ways that people can perform a certain act simply by saying the words to do it, and the theory of conversational implicatures, which focuses on how a phrase can convey more information than its literal meaning would suggest.
There is a growing interest in connecting formal semantics (which treats propositional forms of language as logical objects) with the more experimental and psychological approaches to pragmatics, which concentrate on context dependence. One such approach is known as ‘critical pragmatics,’ and it’s been developed by Korta and Perry. The idea behind critical pragmatics is that we can reduce the number of assumptions about what a speaker intends to communicate by analyzing the different ways in which a statement can be interpreted. This can help us to get closer to a more accurate and complete picture of what’s happening when people use language. It can also help us to develop more useful models of the way that people use language in real-life situations.
