Pragmatic is a term that’s often used to describe someone who takes a practical approach to problems rather than trying to find the most perfect solution. In a business setting, being pragmatic can lead to more success than taking an idealistic approach that might not work in the real world. For example, if you’re an environmentalist, being pragmatic might mean accepting that the only way to save wildlife is to accept that some animals will need to be killed so that others can live.
The discipline of Pragmatics is a field of study that examines the relationship between words and their meaning, as well as the ways in which speakers use those words in particular situations to convey information and achieve certain goals. For instance, the way a word is interpreted can vary depending on whether it’s being spoken in a formal or casual tone, whether it’s being said to make a point or to express humor, or whether the listener is familiar with the speaker.
There are many different approaches to pragmatics, including conversational pragmatics, linguistic pragmatics, and intercultural pragmatics. In addition, there are various subfields within these fields. For example, there’s a field of study called computational pragmatics that examines the computer’s interpretation of language, and another field of study called neuropragmatics that looks at how our brains interpret language. There are also other specialized areas, such as semantic-cognitive pragmatics, social pragmatics, and cognitive pragmatics.
While the study of linguistics has a long history, the discipline of Pragmatics was first introduced as a separate area of investigation in the 1930s. It’s commonly regarded as being on the far side of the divide between semantics and syntax, with semantics focused on the meaning of words and structures as such, and syntax examining the relation between different grammatical forms.
Some philosophers have proposed that the division between semantics and pragmatics should be a bit more fluid. For example, some people have argued that the ‘literalists’ see semantics as being a very independent area with little need for pragmatic intrusion, while other have advocated a more ‘contextualist’ view, such as Relevance Theory, which takes the view that pragmatics should include not just the study of hearer comprehension processes but also the general context in which utterances are made and understood.
Still, most pragmatic theorists will acknowledge that there is a need to distinguish between near-side and far-side pragmatics. Near-side pragmatics is concerned with the nature of the facts that can help determine what a sentence means or what proposition it reflects, and includes such theories as speech act theory, the theory of conversational implicature, and the notion of indexicality. Far-side pragmatics, on the other hand, considers what happens beyond the utterance and includes such theories as ambiguity theory, lexico-semantic analysis, and the concept of denotational content.