Pragmatic is the study of how context contributes to meaning. It is a subfield of linguistics that addresses the contextual meaning of language rather than merely its phonetic or grammatical form. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are known as pragmaticians. It is often contrasted with semantics, the study of the conventional or literal meanings of words and sentences.
The term “pragmatic” is also used to describe a particular style of decision making or approach to problem solving. A person or thing that is pragmatic takes into account the effects of one’s actions on others. For example, if someone kills their creditor and escapes with all of their debt money, this might seem pragmatic solely from the point of view of the killer, but from the perspective of the community, it may be highly immoral.
A pragmatic approach to a problem is often more successful than an idealistic one. For example, in business a pragmatic approach to managing finances is usually more successful than an idealistic one, because businesses need to be able to manage their cash flow and expenses. The pragmatic approach also applies to environmental issues, where it is often more effective to take a practical, middle of the road position than an extreme one.
There are many different approaches to pragmatics, ranging from those who see it primarily as a philosophical project in Grice’s vein, to those who concentrate on its interaction with grammar and those who consider it an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation. In general, those who regard it as an empirical, psychological theory tend to focus on near-side pragmatics, while those who view it primarily as a philosophical project tend to focus on far-side pragmatics.
Near-side pragmatics includes such topics as resolution of ambiguity and vagueness, reference resolution (such as how a computer determines when to use a word to refer to an object or event), indexicals, demonstratives, and anaphors. It also includes the theory of conversational implicature. Far-side pragmatics, on the other hand, involves such topics as modals, presuppositions and lexical extension.
Computational pragmatics, a subfield of computational linguistics, is the application of natural language processing to questions of pragmatics. It attempts to model human reasoning by using contextual information to more accurately approximate the processes by which natural languages are processed and understood. Examples of computational pragmatics include reference resolution, ambiguity resolution, and the treatment of metaphor, hyperbole, and politeness. Ultimately, the goal is to enable computers to behave more like humans in their ability to communicate with each other. This is often seen as a critical step toward developing fully autonomous systems that can learn and adapt to their environment.
