Pragmatic is the study of how people use language to convey meaning in social situations. Developing pragmatic skills is important for successful communication, as it helps us express ourselves clearly and understand others. Some examples of pragmatic language include expressing gratitude and appreciation, asking for help or assistance, responding to questions, and understanding different body movements.
The word pragmatic comes from the Greek pragmatikos, meaning “practical,” and prassein, meaning “to do.” It is most often used as an adjective to describe something that is practical or logical. It is also sometimes used as a noun to refer to a way of thinking or doing things. People who are described as pragmatic tend to be realistic and able to make decisions based on real-world facts and circumstances. This contrasts with idealistic people who have difficulty making decisions based on reality or tend to insist on sticking to their principles no matter what the cost.
In addition to its scholarly importance, pragmatism has also had a significant impact on many aspects of popular culture and on the way that we see ourselves in relation to the world around us. It was a prominent feature of the Deweyan progressive era of American education and philosophy, and was later embraced by influential social scientists such as George Herbert Mead and Alain Locke, who contributed to a broad range of disciplines, including sociology, psychology, religion, history, and economics.
Although the field of pragmatics is widely accepted, its theoretical and methodological approach remains highly controversial. Some scholars argue that pragmatics should pay more attention to the particular contexts in which people speak, the specific tasks they are asked to perform, and the complex linguistic meanings they manage to interpret. Others respond to the criticisms of pragmatics by suggesting that the task demands imposed on participants are the main source of experimental variation, and that scholars should focus more on evaluating the quality and validity of the tasks they use rather than arguing over the content of pragmatic theories (e.g., Clark 1996; Noveck and Sperber 2004; Gibbs and Colston 2012).
Still others point out that the problem of replication in psychological research is a complex one and that there are many possible reasons for failed experiments. Nevertheless, it is clear that pragmatics cannot be understood as a monolithic set of concepts and that new progress will be made in the future only when precise links are established between pragmatic mechanisms on the one hand, and semantic and cognitive processes that underlie individual pragmatic phenomena (and the specific tasks that are used to investigate them) on the other. For example, studies of how children acquire pragmatic competence show that even infants are sensitive to the expectations and intentions of their interlocutors, and that this knowledge facilitates learning of novel words. This is an exciting development that deserves further investigation and theoretical inclusion in pragmatics.
