Pragmatic refers to the social, cultural and situational meaning of language – the meaning that goes beyond literal semantic meaning. It allows us to politely hedge a request, cleverly read between the lines of a conversation or navigate ambiguity in context. Pragmatics is different from linguistics because it is a theory of meaning that takes into account other factors in addition to grammar and semantics.
Pragmatism was first developed by Charles Peirce and William James. The former identifies a ‘present dilemma in philosophy’ which pragmatism aims to resolve, describing two ways of thinking: the tough-minded who commit themselves to experience and go by the facts and the tender-minded who prefer a priori principles to ratiocination (James 1907). He promises that pragmatism will bridge this gap.
He describes the ‘community of inquiry’ which pragmatism supports as providing a platform for truth to emerge from the ebb and flow of practical life, and he urges pragmatists to develop a discourse ethics which provides a framework for authentic communicative action that is free from distortions of power and ideology (Brandom 1996). More recently, philosophers including Michael J. Brandom have developed a ‘logical pragmatics’ which seeks to reconstruct an account of reference that makes sense in practice, and that is not simply a matter of identifying the right meaning of a word or phrase.
Other pragmatists have developed their ideas in a wide range of other areas. George Herbert Mead contributed to sociology and the study of culture, while pragmatism’s influence was further extended in philosophy of race by African-American thinkers such as W.E.B Du Bois and Alain Locke. Pragmatism has also found an audience in education, with pragmatist perspectives on the relations between students and teachers being a feature of educational discourse since the early 20th century.
The concept of pragmatics is now an integral part of most disciplines, from pedagogy to cognitive-science. Some see it, in Grice’s line, as a philosophical project; others focus on its interaction with grammar; still others develop an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation. Despite this diversity, most pragmatists would agree that the pragmatics of speech acts is fundamental to communication. We can understand the meaning of a word or sentence only in the light of its pragmatic context, and a good understanding of pragmatics is vital to being able to communicate effectively. It’s something that parents can help their children with from an early age, by ensuring they are always looking at the person they are talking to, singing songs to them, playing games such as peek-a-boo and establishing eye contact when greeting someone. This is how we build pragmatic skills from birth and learn the important social rules of language.
