Pragmatic is an approach to a situation or question that takes into account practical implications rather than theoretical principles. It is a philosophy of language that deals with the contextual meaning of words and the ways they are used. Pragmatics is a broad and complex field, covering topics like politely hedging a request, cleverly reading between the lines in conversation, and navigating ambiguity in context. It also includes linguistic and intercultural pragmatics, game-theoretic, clinical, and experimental pragmatics, and historical pragmatics.
In a more general sense, the word pragmatic means being practical or sensible. A person who is pragmatic will make sure that they have extra keys made (so they can leave them with friends or family), or will pack an umbrella when traveling to Seattle, because they know that it rains a lot there.
Among philosophers, Pragmatism is known for its rejection of metaphysics and mystical concepts, its emphasis on the importance of experience, and its critique of radical empiricism, which sees everything that is meaningful as something that can be reduced to purely physical phenomena. It also emphasizes the role of logic in reasoning and knowledge and rejects the need for a priori justification of theories. The pragmatist approach is used in fields like public administration, political science, leadership studies, and international relations as well as in more applied areas such as management and research methodology.
It is also the philosophical base for a number of social sciences, such as organizational behavior and sociology. It is also used in the teaching of English as a second language to help students understand how meaning is created and communicated through a variety of social, cultural, and linguistic contexts.
The core of pragmatics is the notion that language is inherently ambiguous, and the most important part of understanding a given communication is knowing how to disambiguate the meaning. This is what makes pragmatics different from semantics – where semantics deals with the literal meaning of a word or sentence, pragmatics goes beyond this and looks at how the speaker intends to be understood in a particular context. One of the founders of pragmatics was Paul Grice, who developed a set of principles that are now called the Gricean Maxims. These are four general rules that seem to apply to most contexts and languages.
The study of pragmatics has a broad range of applications, and it is an essential component for any English teacher to include in their instruction. Teachers may choose to incorporate pragmatics into existing lesson plans or create lessons on specific pragmatic topics, such as taboo questions in different cultures or turn-taking norms in conversation. The more that a student understands the pragmatics of their own language, the more successful they will be in navigating the complexities of communicating in other cultures.