Pragmatic is a philosophical concept that focuses on how words are used in conversation. Its main tenet is that the meaning of a statement is not inherent in the words themselves, but rather determined by their use within context. Pragmatics has a number of different branches including the theory of conversational implicature, the notion that one and the same sentence may have a different meaning depending on how it is used (pragmatic semantics), and speech act theory.

Pragmatism originated in the United States around 1870 and presents a growing alternative to both analytic and continental philosophical traditions worldwide. Its key ideas were developed by Charles Sanders Peirce and his Harvard colleague William James, who positioned it as an alternative to absolute idealism. Its early advocates also included Josiah Royce, who although officially allied with Hegelian metaphysics, was in fact a committed pragmatist.

Peirce and James both authored influential texts on the topic, as did later neopragmatists such as Richard M. Fishman and Robert C. Tucker. The philosophy of pragmatism has broad appeal, attracting followers from a range of disciplines, such as psychology and sociology, and crossing disciplinary boundaries.

The term ‘pragmatic’ is often applied to choices or actions that are considered practical and reasonable. In this sense, it is a positive term, and it can also be used to describe individuals who are pragmatic in their approach to problems.

Pragmatics has a wide range of applications in social communication and language learning. People who are pragmatic in their approach to a problem will find ways to resolve it, and will avoid confrontation. It is also a useful concept when teaching languages, as it encourages students to take into account how other cultures and speakers use their language.

In modern philosophy, pragmatism is often seen as an alternative to epistemology and metaphysics, but has also been applied to moral issues. A pragmatist ethic is one that seeks to understand how we can live good lives in a complex and uncertain world.

Generally speaking, there are two major roots to pragmatics: far-side pragmatics and near-side pragmatics. Far-side pragmatics is concerned with the structure of utterance interpretation as an inferential process. Near-side pragmatics, on the other hand, is concerned with a set of four general rules, called Gricean maxims, that are thought to be common to most languages. These maxims include being courteous, saying what you mean, not misleading others, and not speaking ill of other people.

The underlying assumption of both far-side and near-side pragmatics is that an individual’s actions are determined by the consequences they expect to reap from them. This is a fundamental principle of human rationality. It is also a guiding principle of scientific method, where the importance of consequences is paramount in determining what research questions are to be asked and what methods are to be employed. This basic tenet of pragmatism is widely accepted in many fields, and is especially important in decision-making processes. This is because it provides the most reliable and robust means of assessing the merits of competing solutions.