Pragmatics is a branch of linguistics concerned with how people communicate with each other. It aims to understand how context influences what an utterance means. It also seeks to explain how speakers make decisions about what to say in a given situation. Pragmatics is related to the philosophy of pragmatism, which emphasizes practical results rather than high-minded theories. Having pragmatic language skills is important in both normal development and for children with autism. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder may have difficulty with some components of pragmatic language, such as rephrasing and following social cues. Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder can benefit from visual supports and role playing opportunities to develop appropriate pragmatic language skills.
The word pragmatic comes from the Greek word pragma, meaning “practical.” It is a term that describes an approach or solution that considers real-world conditions and circumstances instead of idealized, abstract notions. In other words, a person who is pragmatic is concerned with how things actually work, rather than focusing on what could or should be. The four-year-old who wants a unicorn for her birthday isn’t being very pragmatic!
There is a wide range of approaches to pragmatics. Some see it as a philosophical project, in the Gricean tradition; others focus on its interaction with grammar; and some, such as Relevance Theory, are empirical psychological models of utterance interpretation. Contemporary philosophical pragmatics are generally divided into three general tendencies: those who view pragmatics as part of semantics; those who think it should be confined to the near side of the explicature; and those who take it to be a largely independent empirical discipline (Bach and Harnish).
Most contemporary pragmatic theory centers on the question of where pragmatics fits in relation to semantics. For example, Kaplan (1989) points out that the fact that a sentence has a particular meaning clearly belongs to semantics. On the other hand, a claim that the hearer processes a word or phrase in a certain way seems to be more appropriately placed in pragmatics.
The debate over the boundary between semantics and pragmatics has intensified since the rise of Relevance Theory in the 1970s. Relevance theorists, for instance, firmly assert that pragmatic ‘intrusion’ into semantics is essential and that this intrusion takes place on both the near side of the explicature (meaning determination) and the far side (meaningless utterances). Other contemporary pragmatic theories, however, reject this assertion. ‘Literalists’ believe that semantics is essentially autonomous, with little ‘pragmatic intrusion’;’minimalists’ such as Cappelen and Lepore take a very minimalist approach to semantics; and ‘hidden indexicalists’ admit pragmatically determined content into the proposition literally expressed by an utterance but deny that it is explicit (Stanley 2000).
Many pragmaticists now see the need for both near-side and far-side pragmatics. Near-side pragmatics includes, but is not limited to, resolution of ambiguity and vagueness, reference to proper names, indexicals, demonstratives, and anaphors; the semantics of modal verbs; and presupposition. The far-side of pragmatics consists of processes on the speaker’s side of the explicature, such as decision making and processing of modal and indefinite expressions.