Pragmatics is the study of language, communication and meaning. It looks beyond the literal meaning of an utterance to see what is implied, and how this can be negotiated between speaker and listener. It also takes into account the context of an utterance. For example, if someone says “Can you lift this box?” – the listener may interpret that as a request to test their strength or an invitation to move the box.
Pragmatists believe that the world is constantly changing and that nothing is permanent (Goldkuhl 2012; Morgan 2014a). Rather than attempting to uncover ultimate truths or true social theories, pragmatism seeks to discover what works for people in their real-world experiences. It is this discovery process that is regarded as the heart of pragmatics.
It has been argued that pragmatism is just a more palatable form of relativism (Koenig et al. 2019). However, this is not necessarily the case. Pragmatism does not simply seek to accept whatever is working, but instead requires that all research methods are evaluated against their effectiveness in meeting the goals of a given project. This includes assessing the outcomes and impact of an experiment as well as its potential for future application to other projects. It is this approach that makes pragmatism a viable method of researching human communication and meaning.
Noam Chomsky, a leading linguist, has been described as a pragmaticist. Although he initially resisted the pragmatic label, in later writings he acknowledged that language is used purposefully and that understanding the structure of a language is important for knowing its use.
Essentially, Chomsky has argued that the meaning of an utterance is not fixed in its semantics (the literal meaning), but rather is constructed. He has called this pragmatic competence, and it is an essential component of understanding language.
An example of pragmatics can be found in the way we play with children. When a child tells us they can hear invisible gremlins in electrical outlets that will bite them if they are touched, this is a pragmatic explanation. It explains the child’s behavior without prescribing what the gremlins actually sound like or what their exact characteristics might be.
The problem with this example is that it has been criticized for lacking an objective analysis of the phenomenon and a clear identification of its causes. In fact, many critics have pointed out that it is simply a case of anecdotal evidence and does not provide any reliable information about the nature of these creatures or the danger they pose to children.
In addition to its reliance on anecdotal evidence, another criticism of pragmatics is that it fails to account for the tasks performed in experimental studies. This is a crucial issue because it means that pragmatic theories must be tailored to the specific task being tested. This is a major reason why some scholars argue that some task demands are more indicative of real-world pragmatic language use than others. However, this argument is viewed as flawed by other pragmatics scholars who have argued that it is impossible to construct theories that supervene on all experimental task demands.