Pragmatic is an essential skill for social interaction and healthy relationships. It is closely linked to empathy, which allows individuals to understand and appreciate the emotions of others and their perspectives. It is also important for building professional relationships and promoting an inclusive communication environment. Pragmatic language includes turn-taking, active listening, and using appropriate verbal and nonverbal cues. It can be difficult for children with pragmatic language delays to develop these skills, and requires patience and perseverance from parents. However, with support from family and peers, individuals can acquire pragmatic language skills that will allow them to interact in a variety of settings.
In philosophical terms, pragmatism is a doctrine that describes an individual’s interpretations of reality and their molding of language and theorizing as being motivated by considerations of effectiveness and utility according to human purposes (Maxcy 2003). The philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey, psychologist George Herbert Mead, and many other academic and non-academic thinkers have contributed to the development of pragmatic philosophy.
The pragmatist philosophy is rooted in American cultural and philosophical tradition. As such, it has been viewed as being a “soft” philosophical approach that avoids the rigor and logical strictures of traditional Western philosophy and instead embraces a more freewheeling, pragmatic method and orientation to research (Creswell 2013; Creswell and Plano Clark 2011). Contemporary pragmatist scholars have sought to situate pragmatism within a broader philosophic framework, tracing connections between Peirce’s pragmatic thought and 19th century idealism, for example, while some have emphasized the pragmatist foundation of feminism, ecology, Native American philosophy, and other liberatory philosophical projects (Koenig et al. 2019).
A central characteristic of pragmatism is its view that truth is a useful but not necessarily absolute, and that knowledge is primarily practical and instrumental in nature. It also views existence as fundamentally dynamic and therefore subject to change. Because of these characteristics, pragmatists have been critical of moral and metaphysical doctrines that relegate change to the margins or that attempt to transcend and control evolution.
In methods, pragmatism places primary emphasis on the research question and sidelines epistemological and ontological positions in favor of methodologies that can be proven to provide relevant results (Bryman 2006). This stance makes it possible to conduct research using both qualitative and quantitative methods. This pragmatist stance can be seen in the development of educational interventions, as well as research that combines both qualitative and quantitative methodologies (Creswell 2013; Creswell & Plano Clark 2011). This is not to say that epistemological and ontological positions are irrelevant. They are crucial in understanding the warrants for a particular method, the questions that are asked, and the kind of knowledge that is expected to be produced. Any researcher, regardless of their philosophies or epistemological position, must take these into account.
