Pragmatic is the study of the way speakers use language to convey their meaning. It focuses on the context of language use and on what the speaker intends to communicate rather than on the semantics of words or the grammar of sentences. Pragmatics is a broad area of study which includes conversational pragmatics, intercultural pragmatics, sociolinguistic pragmatics, and even neuropragmatics.
The word pragmatic comes from the Greek pragma, meaning “deed,” and has historically been used to describe philosophers or politicians who were more concerned with real-world applications of ideas than with abstract notions. A person who is pragmatic is someone who takes a realistic approach to situations and is not afraid to compromise. Pragmatic language skills are essential for children to develop, and research indicates that pragmatic development is a crucial part of early language acquisition. Pragmatic skills include things such as the ability to initiate a conversation, take turns, understand a metaphor or ironic statement and participate in the social conventions of speech.
As more evidence-based treatments are developed and implemented in clinical settings, it becomes increasingly important to consider the impact of these interventions on individuals who receive them. It is also important to understand how these interventions can be evaluated and the best methods for doing so. As a result, pragmatics has become an integral field of study in the evaluation of communication interventions.
A major figure in the classical pragmatist pantheon was John Dewey (1859-1952), who had considerable influence over American intellectual life for a half-century, and had many disciples and imitators. But after Dewey, pragmatism lost much of its momentum and prestige.
One of the main challenges for the pragmatist is to provide a suitable successor to Dewey, and especially to James and Peirce. By the 1940s, however, with the rise of a self-consciously analytic philosophy, mainstream philosophers had started to turn their attention elsewhere and had largely ignored pragmatism.
Another challenge for pragmatism is to explain how its maxims and principles relate to other aspects of philosophical thought. For example, how does a pragmatic view of truth relate to the notions of fact and value? How does a pragmatic view of action relate to the notions of motivation and consequence?
The most recent development in the study of pragmatics keluaran sgp is an attempt to unify and expand its scope by embracing all kinds of pragmatics. Thus there is now formal and computational pragmatics; theoretical, experimental, and applied pragmatics; intercultural and sociolinguistic pragmatics; and neuropragmatics. All of these approaches seek to explore the ways in which people’s beliefs and expectations about what they can and cannot communicate are affected by their situation, their goals and objectives, and their strategies for communicating them. This expansion is reflected in the name of the journal where most of these studies are published: The Journal of Pragmatics. The new name reflects the fact that pragmatics is no longer just a philosophical theory of meaning, but is now also a discipline with a practical application.
