Pragmatic is the study of how language is used to convey meaning in a particular context. It is what allows us to politely hedge a request, cleverly read between the lines, negotiate turn-taking norms in conversation, or navigate ambiguity in context. The Blackwell Dictionary defines pragmatics as “the significance conventionally or literally attached to words or sentences and the further significance that can be worked out by more general principles, using contextual information.”
There is a lot of experimental research on pragmatics. Most of this research involves presenting individual participants with a series of stimuli, representing different experimental conditions. Then they will be asked to respond to these stimuli in some manner that is instructed by the researcher. The data from these experiments are then analyzed to try and understand how people perform in each condition. It is important to remember that these analyses are often based on averages across many individuals. This means that there are likely to be many individual differences in the experimental results, which is one of the reasons why there has been so much debate about the replication crisis in psychology.
William James was a philosopher who developed the pragmatic approach to philosophy. He believed that something is true only in so far as it works. This could be on a psychological level, or it might be something like the soothing effect of prayer on a person. His philosophical system was rooted in classical pragmatism, but he developed a metaphysics that is not a denial of transcendent truths.
In the early 20th century, classical pragmatism gained momentum in America, with John Dewey at the forefront. He, along with his fellow pragmatists George Herbert Mead and Charles Sanders Peirce, was deeply concerned with democratic education, social reform, and promoting human flourishing. He was also interested in the way that thought and action were connected, a theme which is central to pragmatics.
Although pragmatism is most closely associated with Dewey, it has been influenced by other figures, including Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett. These women were involved in the Hull House experience and women’s rights causes, and their philosophy is consistent with pragmatist ideas. More recently, philosophers such as Richard Rorty and Charles Taylor have reclaimed the term pragmatic in their work, and have developed a more sophisticated analytic version of the approach.
The modern application of pragmatism is in the fields of leadership, public administration, organizational behavior, and conflict resolution. In these areas, the pragmatist idea of understanding how people use language and the meaning potential of an utterance is useful for achieving positive outcomes. This is especially the case when working in teams, where the ability to communicate with each other in a way that is effective and appropriate for the situation is essential. For example, the pragmatics of language can help people to achieve their goals in meetings, by ensuring that each team member understands what the other is trying to say and what they mean.
