The word pragmatic is from the Greek pragmatikos, meaning “practical” or “relating to practice.” Pragmatics is an area of study in philosophy and linguistics that focuses on the contextual and situation-dependent aspects of language interpretation. Its branches include conversational implicature, speech act theory, and the theory of utterance meaning.
The pragmatist philosophical view is a viable alternative to the dominant analytic and continental philosophy traditions. The pragmatist viewpoint emerged in the US in the early nineteenth century, with first generation pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce and his Harvard colleague William James leading the charge. Various liberatory philosophical projects, such as feminism, ecology, Native American philosophy, and Latin American philosophy, also look to the pragmatist tradition for their intellectual home.
Pragmatics is an interdisciplinary field that bridges many other areas of research, including semantics, discourse analysis, interactional linguistics and ethnomethodology, sociolinguistics, media studies, philosophy, and cognitive science. Researchers in these disciplines often employ a range of methods in their work, such as corpus linguistics, experimental methodology, and qualitative analyses of natural data.
As an increasingly global society, linguists have a unique opportunity to make contributions in the field of pragmatics by studying cross-linguistic variation and contact. Research in pragmatics is increasingly focusing on incorporating cross-cultural data in the search for a more holistic understanding of human communication and meaning making.
In a classroom, pragmatics is often taught by connecting it to content in a text or to linguistic functions such as greetings, asking for help, apologizing, and closing the conversation. For example, a teacher might introduce an activity that requires students to make appropriate greetings in different situations using real-life role-plays. Then, the instructor might ask students to evaluate how their peers responded and what could be improved upon in future practice.
There are also numerous pragmatics-related instructional activities that are not tied to content or linguistic functions. These are generally designed to improve students’ pragmatic competence by increasing awareness of cultural differences in how people communicate. This can be done through games, activities, and simulations that allow learners to practice their new skills in a safe environment.
While the vast majority of pragmatics-related studies are conducted in formal, laboratory settings, there is a growing interest in examining the role of culture and context in teaching pragmatics in informal learning environments such as schools and community centers. These types of studies can provide important insights into how language is learned and used in the real world. They can also contribute to our understanding of the factors that influence the development and acquisition of pragmatics. Despite its complexity and the many controversies surrounding it, pragmatics remains an exciting and promising area of inquiry in language study.
