Pragmatic is a philosophy that takes social and cultural context into account when speaking. It is often contrasted with semantics, which is the “meaning” of words and sentences in a literal sense. However, semantics and pragmatics are closely linked because a word’s meaning depends on the situation it is used in.
The term pragmatism has a broad application across many academic fields and disciplines. It is a philosophical approach that values practicality, logic, and reasoning over idealism and moralistic ideals. This philosophy has been incorporated into the fields of public administration, leadership studies, international relations, and research methodology.
Generally, people who use the term pragmatism are described as someone who is willing to compromise and take reality into consideration before making a decision. However, pragmatism can also be seen as a mindset that allows one to live life with a healthy dose of idealism while still allowing for realistic outcomes. In a business setting, it is common to hear of leaders advocating for being more pragmatic and less “idealistic” in order to make sure that the organization is successful.
In linguistics, the field of pragmatics is the study of how people’s intentions and goals interact with the surrounding social, cultural, and conversational environment. While the philosophy of pragmatism is quite broad, scholars who specialize in this area tend to focus on different aspects of pragmatics. For example, some pragmaticists may focus on issues like politeness and inferences while others may concentrate on how people respond to humor or sarcasm.
It is important to remember that pragmatics is a dynamic process that changes as people adapt to their environments. This makes it difficult for researchers to create theories that can supervene over the specific task demands of each experimental pragmatic situation. However, this does not mean that pragmatics is unimportant or irrelevant to experimental psychology and psycholinguistics.
For example, in the Forum article “Pragmatic Activities for the Speaking Classroom,” Joseph Siegel explains that an easy way to incorporate pragmatics into a speech class is to provide students with several request scenarios and ask them how they would make a request in each scenario. The students then discuss their answers and how the underlying pragmatics influence each response.
In addition, a pragmatic perspective allows us to look at how a person’s beliefs and values play into the decision-making process. For example, a student might believe that it is inappropriate to tell someone they don’t like them because it could cause conflict and hurt feelings. If a teacher were to promote this philosophy in the classroom, they could teach the student to be more respectful and to think about the impact of their actions before reacting negatively to another’s words or actions. In this way, the philosophy of pragmatism can be used to promote civility and empathy in the classroom and beyond.
