Pragmatic is a word that describes a person who thinks about things in terms of real world outcomes rather than as theoretical constructs. When a four year old says she wants a unicorn for her birthday, she isn’t being very pragmatic. Likewise, when a politician claims to be pragmatic, it means that he is willing to make compromises to get something done.
A philosophical movement known as Pragmatist is centered around this concept of practicality. This school of thought is a reaction to the dominance of idealism and absolutism in western philosophy. This movement was created in the United States during the 19th century. William James and John Dewey were major figures in this philosophy and helped to bring it to prominence. Their ideas were broad and wide-ranging and their impact was felt both in the United States and internationally.
One of the main themes that pragmatists focused on was how language works. This is referred to as Pragmatics and there are a number of different approaches that can be taken to the study of this concept. Some of these approaches are referred to as Classical Pragmatics while others are more recent and have been characterized by the term ‘contextualist’.
The two approaches to Pragmatics that a ‘contextualist’ can take are called near-side and far-side pragmatics. These two models are important to understand because they are the basis for how pragmatics is viewed in the contemporary philosophical discourse. The near side of pragmatics is concerned with the nature of certain facts that are relevant to determining what is said. The far-side of pragmatics is more concerned with the meaning of utterances and their context and the strategies that speakers use to communicate within that context.
Some pragmatists have gone beyond these two basic models and have developed their own approaches to the study of Pragmatics. For example, some pragmatists have focused on how meaning is acquired and how it changes through the use of language. Others have concentrated on the role of grammar in pragmatics and have studied the way grammatical features contribute to meaning acquisition.
While there is no unified view of Pragmatics that is shared by all pragmatists, there are some ideas and theses that have loomed large for a significant group of them. These include the following: