Pragmatic is a philosophical term used to describe people who are practical and reasonable in their actions. They are willing to compromise to get what they want, and understand that they can’t always have everything their way. Pragmatists are often contrasted with idealistic people, who are more concerned with their ideals and don’t consider the consequences of their actions.
Pragmatism is a philosophy that originated in the US around 1870 and now presents a growing third alternative to analytic and Continental philosophical traditions worldwide. Its first generation were Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910) and their Harvard colleague Josiah Royce (1855-1916). Pragmatism’s key ideas are a rejection of the Cartesian picture of the mind as an egoic self-reflection, and an insistence on an a posteriori epistemology.
It is also a rejection of the idea that knowledge must be based on direct experience, and an affirmation of a pragmatic, socially constructed sense of reality that is informed by our experiences with other people. A number of other liberatory philosophical projects in areas such as feminism, ecology and Native American philosophy also look to pragmatism for their inspiration.
The pragmatists are also critical of the dominant theories of language and thought, particularly the philosophy of Kant, and argue that the traditional distinction between logical and empirical languages is incoherent. They propose a new theory of meaning that focuses on what utterances are meaningful, rather than what they mean in isolation. It is an utterance’s context, whose pragmatic potential is defined by its intended audience and purpose, that defines its meaningfulness.
This theory is known as linguistic semantics or pragmatics, and is central to our understanding of language use. It explains how we negotiate meaning with others and what we think is meant by words and sentences in context, and enables us to analyse the ways in which people use language. It is a key area of research in Applied Linguistics, Sociolinguistics and Communication Studies.
Without pragmatics, we would have little to go on in our understanding of the intentions and meanings behind utterances, as it provides a framework for analysing what people really mean by the words they say. It also enables us to develop and understand children’s pragmatic abilities, which is important in relation to their cognitive development, and how they learn to use the language they have.
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