Pragmatic is a relatively new and growing subfield of linguistics, and one which attempts to evaluate how context contributes to the meaning of words. It is distinct from the other structural aspects of language, which are generally considered to be independent of context: phonology, syntax and semantics. Linguists who specialize in pragmatics are called pragmaticians.
The word pragmatic is derived from the Latin prerogative, meaning ‘a privilege, privilege of being granted,’ which in turn is related to the Greek prefix pragma, meaning ‘practical,’ ‘of practical use,’ and ‘of or relating to pragmatism.’ Thus, the pragmatics of language is about what a speaker does with his or her words in real-life situations (rather than with the theoretical principles that make them work).
As an academic discipline, pragmatics has a diverse range of interests and approaches. There are formal and computational pragmatics; theoretical, pedagogical and applied; intercultural, cognitive and experimental pragmatics; neuropragmatics; historical pragmatics, and more. There is also a significant overlap between the field of pragmatics and linguistic philosophy, with both perspectives considering the social and functional properties of language, and how these influence its interpretation.
A person who is characterized as pragmatic is someone who takes into account the effects of his or her actions on other people in a real-life context. This is often contrasted with an idealistic view of language which focuses more on the pure’spiritual’ or ‘logical’ aspects of communication.
Children acquire pragmatic skills through participation in everyday communicative interactions with parents, peers and teachers, such as expressing needs and wants, negotiating disagreements and playing games. The development of these skills is critical to their overall communication ability, and pragmatic learning is a core aspect of human language acquisition.
The field of pragmatics has been influenced by many different theories and viewpoints. Relevance theory, for example, sees pragmatics as a study of what is conveyed beyond the literal meaning of an utterance, and how the speaker’s intentions and beliefs shape the interpretation of that utterance by the hearer. This approach to pragmatics is generally regarded as the beginning of ‘near-side’ pragmatics, rather than the classic far-side pragmatics of Grice.
The fact that pragmatics is a multifaceted discipline has contributed to the wide diversity of topics covered. Nevertheless, some of the most frequently explored pragmatic topics include ‘pragmatic competence’ and ‘pragmatic behavior in young children’. This can be seen in the network visualization below, which shows the most cited authors and topics in the WOS database. This is a dynamic visualization, so it is updated as new papers are published.
