Pragmatic is a word often contrasted with idealistic, meaning practical and reasonable in terms of the outcomes one can achieve. In the context of language, pragmatics is a discipline that explores how people use language in social situations. This includes interpreting and using non-verbal cues in communication. Children typically pick up pragmatic language skills naturally during their early years through exposure to speech and other interactions with adults and other children. However, it is important to note that some children develop pragmatic language impairments that may hinder their learning and socialization. This is especially true for deaf children who lack age-appropriate pragmatic language.
The field of pragmatics is vast and has a wide range of approaches. Some practitioners focus on the social aspects of language; others examine semantics and syntax; others still look at the nature of meaning, and yet others explore what constitutes an utterance’s communicative intention. The general tendency is to recognize that there are multiple dimensions to pragmatics and to avoid the creation of a narrow and stifling theory.
For instance, some pragmatics scholars emphasize a speaker’s communicative intention (called “M(aning)-intention” by Grice) and the ways in which it must be fulfilled for an utterance to have meaning. Others focus on the utterance’s referential content, or the way in which an utterance relates to its environment, or how it fits within the grammar. And there are those who take a more empirical psychological approach to pragmatics by looking at the comprehension processes that are involved in understanding an utterance.
From a philosophical perspective, pragmatism is an epistemological position that holds that beliefs only have value in how useful they are for inquiry and action. For example, the belief that God exists may be helpful in some ways but if it doesn’t prove useful in the pursuit of truth then it isn’t really a valid belief.
However, if the belief is useful in helping us survive then it’s not only useful, but necessary. In this sense, pragmatism is not antithetical to religion and is in fact an evolutionary argument for faith. For William James, a major proponent of pragmatism, nothing is considered necessarily true or false; rather, something is true or false only insofar as it works to help us cope with our environment. This makes pragmatism a type of utilitarianism. However, some pragmatic philosophers disagree with this view and hold that the pragmatic value of a belief must be weighted against its metaphysical or philosophical value in order to determine whether it’s worth pursuing. This is known as a form of pragmatic relativism.
