Pragmatic is an approach to situations and decisions based on practical considerations. People who are pragmatic prioritize results and effectiveness, and tend to be more willing to compromise than those with entrenched ideals or philosophical beliefs. For example, a person who is pragmatic may decide to settle a lawsuit because they believe that it will save them more money than taking the case all the way through court.
The word pragmatic is derived from the Latin pragma, meaning “to pursue, to seek.” Pragmatic individuals are often very good at recognizing what will actually be helpful or productive in any given situation. They may also be very good at understanding and deciphering social cues, which can help them to avoid misunderstandings and improve their relationships with others. Pragmatic skills are also useful in the workplace, as they can help employees to adapt to different work environments and communicate more effectively with co-workers.
As a philosophy, pragmatism is centered around the belief that knowledge is only useful when it can be applied to produce a meaningful difference in real-world practice (Goldkuhl 2012). This doctrine dates back to the early 19th century in the United States and can be traced back to a discussion group that took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1870s called the Metaphysical Club. This group included Charles Sanders Peirce, mathematician, logician and philosopher; psychologist William James; lawyer, educator, moralist and philosopher John Dewey; sociologist and psychologist George Herbert Mead; and jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (Maxcy 2003).
Although the doctrine of pragmatism was initially popular among Americans, it was soon overtaken by the progress of philosophy as a specialized academic discipline. In particular, pragmatism was never able to fully take hold in the analytic community of philosophy, which favored other philosophical theories like naturalism and realism (Borradori 2004).
A central element of pragmatics is the notion that languages are inherently ambiguous, and knowing how to disambiguate meaning can help us to understand more about our everyday interactions with others. For instance, a person might say they found a painting “by the tree” but what they really mean is that it was found by someone in the family who lives next door to the tree. This type of ambiguity is common and can be easily solved with pragmatic knowledge.
In recent years, social work scholars have turned to the philosophy of pragmatism to argue that the pragmatic approach to knowledge can be used to support research and practice in the field of social justice. For example, many scholars have argued that a pragmatic methodology can be used to assess whether or not the research methods being used in a project are appropriate for its goals and purposes. Furthermore, social workers are often interested in evaluating how effective their interventions are, which can be done by applying a pragmatic approach to the collection and evaluation of data. Therefore, using a pragmatic methodology can be a useful tool in the creation of knowledge for the social work profession.
