Pragmatic is a term that describes a person who is practical rather than theoretical in her approach to problems and situations. It’s also a philosophy trend that views the meaning and truth of concepts through their practical consequences.
The pragmatist is often seen as a “get-it-done” type of person in business and politics. She’s the kind of person who doesn’t let her moral principles get in the way of her getting results. However, there’s a darker side to pragmatics that can be dangerous when it comes to ethics and morality. For example, a pragmatic view of morality could allow someone to justify his or her own prejudices to the detriment of others.
There are several different definitions of pragmatics, including the idea that it deals with what’s effective in communication and the social context of an utterance. The term is also used in computer science to describe an approach to natural language processing that uses contextual knowledge to better approximate human speech and information processing abilities. In fact, computational pragmatics is a subdiscipline of artificial intelligence that’s considered one of the most important areas of research in this area.
Some experts define pragmatics as “meaning minus semantics and grammar.” Semantics deals with the literal meaning of an utterance, while grammar involves the rules that determine how language is put together. Pragmatics adds the social context of an utterance to make up the total meaning potential of that utterance.
For instance, if a daughter says to her mother that eating cookies can make you gain weight, she may have intended for that statement to be a simple warning. However, the mother may interpret that statement as a dig at her friend’s weight. In that case, the mother is using her pragmatics to determine the implication of the utterance.
In addition to the linguistic aspects of pragmatics, there are also sociological and anthropological elements of it. Sociology and anthropology, which focus on the development of human societies and cultures, help us understand how people communicate with one another. They also offer insight into the nuances of language and the many ways that it can be interpreted.
The field of pragmatics is an important one in many different fields, especially the study of disorders that affect communication skills. For example, a child with autism spectrum disorder who has trouble with social pragmatics will have trouble communicating effectively. Research has shown that teaching communication skills, or social pragmatics, to children with autism can have a significant positive impact on the quality of their life. However, many educators and speech pathologists do not know how to teach these skills or assess a child’s pragmatic language skills. This is a gap that needs to be addressed by educational professionals and speech pathologists. Developing these skills is critical for children with autism and other communication disorders. Currently, there are a number of tests and checklists that can be used to assess a child’s pragmatic language skills, but these methods do not always produce accurate results.