Pragmatic is a word that describes people, behaviors, and approaches that are practical in nature. Pragmatic individuals are willing to compromise in order to get a desired result even if they don’t end up getting everything they want. They are more focused on results and practicality than on idealistic dreams.
A philosophy that is based on the principles of pragmatism is called pragmatics. A number of fields have adopted pragmatism’s approach including humanities, business, and education. Its tenets focus on the link between thought and action and are often applied to leadership studies, organizational theory, and conflict resolution.
The word pragmatic comes from the Latin praegere, meaning “to go before” or “to be ahead.” In other words, it’s a philosophy that seeks to understand how languages are used in real-world contexts. The field of pragmatics is incredibly vast and encompasses various topics such as conversational implicatures, communication, and linguistic semantics.
Those who subscribe to pragmatism believe that the only way for knowledge to be valid is if it works in the real world. Therefore, pragmatics is often associated with empirical research. It is an interdisciplinary field with subfields like experimental, clinical, and theoretical pragmatics.
It also includes intercultural, sociocultural, and neuropragmatics. The goal of pragmatic research is to provide clinically relevant results that can be applied in practice. This is achieved by using a variety of methodologies such as qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods. Additionally, pragmatic researchers are consciously aware of the social, cultural and ethical implications of their work.
Pragmatists believe that language is socially constructed and there is no such thing as a neutral point of view or task-free environment from which utterance interpretation can begin. Rather, every interaction is contextually situated from the beginning, and all theories of linguistic pragmatics should embrace this reality.
A metaphysical pragmatist, William James believed that something is only true in the sense that it achieves its practical purpose. He believed that the ontological claims of religions are incompatible with pragmatism but did not deny the existence of transcendent realities.
Neopragmatism, a modern variation of pragmatism developed by Richard Rorty, is a philosophy that seeks to extend the ideas of classical American pragmatism and bring it closer to continental philosophy. It has been criticized as relativistic by other neopragmatists and analytic philosophers.
