Pragmatics is a field of study that deals with the social meaning of language and speech. It is a subset of semantics that takes into account things like cultural, situational, and idiomatic use of words and phrases to determine their meaning in context. Without pragmatics, we wouldn’t be able to politely hedge a request, cleverly read between the lines, negotiate turn-taking norms in conversation, and navigate ambiguity in context.
A central idea of pragmatism is that reality is in a state of becoming. This means that people’s experiences of the world can be altered by their actions and, in turn, influence the way that reality changes. This is a different view to other philosophical positions that hold that reality is in a fixed state.
Moreover, the pragmatist philosophy also emphasizes that knowledge is actionable and can be utilized to transform reality. This is a powerful approach for navigating qualitative applied research on organizational processes in NGOs, as it offers a lens to understand how the inquiry process itself can shape and influence the underlying realities of implementing staff in NGOs (Biesta 2010; Goldkuhl 2012).
In practical terms, a pragmatic perspective allows you to move beyond the purely literal meaning of an utterance and consider its implications, which may not be immediately apparent. It also allows you to take into account the varying degrees of reality and the potential for multiple interpretations of an event. This allows you to be more tolerant of situations where there are competing truths, which can help you navigate complex issues that are difficult to solve using simple, black-and-white approaches.
Pragmatism can be used throughout the research process from developing a research objective to framing the research problem and choosing methodology. For example, in the two project examples discussed below, a pragmatist approach was closely linked to the articulation of research objectives and the identification of a ‘research question’ that would be deemed useful and practical to the respondent organizations.
Moreover, in both projects, an emphasis on pragmatics was integrated with the coding and analysis of data, and was considered when writing up research findings. The application of pragmatism thus helped to ensure that the research questions were grounded in respondent experiences, and that the findings could be put into practice at the organizational level.
In addition, it is important to note that a pragmatist philosophy can be incorporated into the teaching of pragmatics at all levels. Teachers can introduce pragmatic principles into their lessons by encouraging learners to determine the best way to communicate in a particular situation, as well as exploring how other cultures and languages approach this. They can also teach students how to identify linguistic conventions and how to interpret them. In this way, they can encourage learners to develop a pragmatic competence, which is the ability to disambiguate meaning in context and to be flexible with their communication.