Pragmatic describes a type of behavior or policy that seeks to find workable solutions to problems rather than following theories or relying on ideals. The term may also refer to a philosophical trend that determines the meaning and truth of concepts through their direct, practical consequences. The concept of pragmatics, a branch of philosophy that focuses on the context-dependent nature of utterance interpretation, is central to this trend.
The term pragmatic is often used as a synonym for “realist” or “rational.” A person who is pragmatic is one who is able to make decisions based on real-world circumstances and is able to disambiguate the meaning of words to facilitate communication. In this way, they are able to avoid being blinded by big-picture ideals and emotions and instead see the reality of the situation and how to best proceed.
A key principle of pragmatism is that the best solution to a problem usually involves some compromise. This is because a solution that will meet the goals of everyone involved may not be possible, or may not be as desirable as an all-out win for any of the stakeholders. A pragmatic person will be willing to give a little to get a lot in order to reach their goal, and they are not easily offended by having to settle for less than what they want.
The field of pragmatics is a complex and multifaceted field, and there are many different branches and approaches to the study of language and its pragmatic properties. Some of the most common branches include pragmatics as a linguistic methodology, semantics, and pragmatics as an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation. Each of these approaches has its own strengths and weaknesses, but they all share the common goal of focusing on practical outcomes in research and decision making.
Semantics, the study of the meanings and underlying structures of language, is closely linked to pragmatics in that both entail a consideration of how language is used. However, there is some debate as to whether semantics and pragmatics are entirely separate disciplines or if they overlap in certain ways. For example, Donnellan’s distinction between the semantic meaning of a description and its attributional use falls within Gricean pragmatics, but there is still the issue that this view of pragmatics does not take into account all the conversational implicatures of an utterance.
A contemporary incarnation of pragmatism is found in the field of computational pragmatics, which is concerned with how natural language processing systems can be improved through the use of contextual information to disambiguate the meaning of words and phrases. For instance, if a computer system is trying to determine if a word or phrase has the same meaning as another, it will look at all the ways in which that word or phrase can be used, including what other users of that system have said about it. This will allow the computer to more accurately predict what a user means by that word or phrase.
