Pragmatic is the study of language use in context, extending beyond semantics (the “meaning” of words and sentences in their literal sense). It includes factors such as social, cultural and situational influences on communication. It is often viewed as the “art” of language.

Pragmatist philosophy has had significant influence in a number of fields. The pragmatist concept of truth as a pragmatically defined community of interpreters, for example, has found traction in the theory of democracy and political discourse. Similarly, Peirce’s inquiry-based analysis of truth has been embraced by philosophers in a range of liberal arts disciplines, including education, religion and aesthetics. A significant body of liberatory philosophical projects, such as those in feminism, ecology and Native American philosophy also look to pragmatism for their intellectual home.

As a result of the work of classical pragmatists, we now have a broad array of tools to examine how people actually use language in their daily lives. These include a growing array of formal techniques (e.g., lexicography, corpus linguistics and computational semantics) which allow us to explore the nature of semantic and pragmatic meaning. More generally, the field of experimental pragmatics is thriving, with a growing tendency for experimental studies to incorporate or reference pragmatic data and for experiments to be designed at a level that is appropriate for the developmental stage of the participant.

A growing number of neopragmatists are taking up the challenge to develop a theory of pragmatics that is capable of describing the diverse meanings which people understand utterances to convey, both between and within individuals (i.e., how a single person understands a given utterance in different contexts at different times). This is not an easy task and it is likely that neopragmatism will continue to be a highly contentious area of research.

The journal of Pragmatics publishes high-quality papers dealing with all aspects of pragmatism, from the history and development of pragmatism, to contemporary issues in semantics, pragmatics and the wider field of human language and communication. The journal aims to contribute to the development of pragmatics as a discipline and as a useful tool for addressing practical problems in communication. It therefore promotes interaction between linguistics and other disciplines, especially those with an empirical focus, such as psychology, sociology, philosophy, education, social policy and law.

The journal is published by Routledge on behalf of the Society for Pragmatist Philosophy. It is available both online and in hard copy and is abstracted and indexed in the following databases: