Pragmatic is a word used in many contexts, but it is usually used to describe someone who deals sensibly and realistically with situations. It contrasts with the word idealistic, which describes people who are based on or have high principles and ideals. A person who is pragmatic is more concerned with results and consequences than with theoretical options or courses of action. A pragmatic person is willing to compromise between their ideal theoretical course of action and the best practical outcome they can manufacture in a given situation. This is often a good trait for people to have, particularly in business or the workplace.
Pragmatic also refers to a philosophical movement that emphasizes practical consequences in the determination of meaning, truth or value. It can also refer to the linguistic discipline of pragmatics, which is the study of language in context and considers how people use the tools of speech to convey information. It is considered one of the seven pillars that build the foundation of language study.
The term pragmatic is often used to distinguish it from semantics, which is the study of words and their meanings. While semantics is generally considered to be the foundation of language, pragmatics focuses on how people use those words in a particular context and how they are understood by others.
Different pragmatics theorists have focused on different properties of utterances. One way to classify them is by whether they are concerned with ‘near-side’ or ‘far-side’ pragmatics. Near-side pragmatics is concerned with the nature of certain facts that are relevant to determining what is said, such as resolution of ambiguity and vagueness, reference fixing, and indexicals and demonstratives. Far-side pragmatics focuses on what happens beyond saying something, such as the effects of speech acts and conversational implicatures.
A pragmatics theorist may also be characterized by his or her view of’semantic content’. Some theorists, such as the minimalists and hidden-indexicalists, do not accept any pragmatically determined element of utterance content that is not triggered by grammar. Other theorists, such as the literalists and generative pragmaticists, allow for a degree of contextually sensitive expression to be embedded in the proposition, but do not treat this as part of’semantic content’.
The field of pragmatics is a broad and complex one. The underlying theories of pragmatics are rooted in a wide variety of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, sociology and anthropology. They include pragmatism, Grice’s four maxims, politeness theory and conversational implicature. Pragmatics is an important field because it provides a framework for understanding how people communicate in the world, both verbally and nonverbally. This knowledge can help us to better understand the ways in which we can interact with other people and how the rules of communication change across cultures and over time. The more we learn about pragmatics, the more we will be able to navigate the complexities of human communication. It is a crucial component of our social lives and the success of our organizations and businesses.
