Pragmatic is a philosophy that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than for describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Among other things, pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, and belief—are best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. Pragmatism also has broad implications for many other fields of philosophy, such as metaphysics and epistemology.
A common way that pragmatic is used in everyday speech is to contrast it with idealism. Pragmatic people are considered to be realistic, whereas idealistic people often have trouble putting their ideas into practice. However, it is possible to be pragmatic without being opposed to idealism—for example, when someone tries to find a middle ground in their political beliefs.
The term pragmatic is also used in linguistics to refer to the study of how one word or sentence can have different meanings depending on context. The branch of linguistics that deals with this is called pragmatics. Some scholars have defined pragmatics as the study of the “relation of signs and their interpreters.”
In other words, pragmatics studies how meaning is established, understood, and negotiated between speakers and listeners. It is a subset of semantics (which studies the relation of words to the objects or ideas that they are supposed to mean) and syntax (which examines relationships between words).
Pragmatics has a number of distinct branches, including discourse analysis, conversational implicatures, speech act theory, and the theory of ambiguity. One of the most important developments in pragmatics was the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, who developed the pragmatic maxims. The work of William James and John Dewey was also influential in pragmatism. A variety of other 20th century philosophers have contributed to pragmatism, including Chauncey Wright and George Herbert Mead. Some pragmatists are epistemological relativists, but others, such as Joseph Margolis, argue that relativism is seriously misguided.
Another area of pragmatics is computational pragmatism, which concerns how computers can use contextual information to more accurately model natural human language and information processing abilities. Reference resolution, which is how a computer determines the meaning of an object, is a key part of this area of pragmatics. Other areas of computational pragmatism include the study of metaphor, hyperbole, and politeness.
