Pragmatics is a field of language study that examines the use of language in context, rather than focusing on semantics or grammar. It includes such topics as how one word can have different meanings in different situations, how the meaning of a sentence may depend on what has been said before it and what the speaker’s intentions are in a given conversation, how linguistic cues can influence the interpretation of a speech act, and how a person’s social standing influences how they communicate.
The field of pragmatics is broad and intersects with several other fields of research, including philosophy of language, semantics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, interactional linguistics, and anthropology. It has particular importance in intercultural communication and in understanding the role that cultural norms play in the interpretation of language. It also has relevance to a range of other areas, including psychology and the social sciences.
One of the central principles embodied in pragmatism is the dialectic interpretation process, which involves linking beliefs and actions through a dynamic process of inquiry and reflection. This enables researchers to discover and understand human reality in ways that are more clear and concise than philosophical approaches that presume that beliefs and actions exist separately from each other.
This dialectic interpretation principle was influenced by Dewey, who suggested that all conscious human action involves some form of inquiry or assessment in response to the environment. He believed that this process of interpreting experiences and actions would uncover social realities in more accurate and useful ways than philosophical approaches that assumed human behaviour and actions existed independently from each other.
As a research method, pragmatism is flexible and adaptive in its approach to data collection and analysis. It emphasizes the need for contextually relevant observations, and focuses on building theory through incremental understanding from such observations (Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009). This approach contrasts with other research methods that are more rigid and based on deduction or induction.
In two examples of NGO research, the use of a pragmatic approach enabled researchers to uncover the meanings and consequences of NGO practices in their actual context. This resulted in a more textured and meaningful analytical process than might otherwise have been possible, and contributed to the generation of practical knowledge that was both useful and beneficial to the participants in the research.
The selection of pragmatism as an overarching philosophical orientation at the research design stage was strongly influenced by the need to produce practical and actionable knowledge that was grounded in respondent experience and thus of value to case study organizations. It was therefore closely tied to establishing the research objective and framing the research problem. It also shaped the choice of methods, which was informed by the need to ensure that analytical processes were responsive to the interests and agendas of respondents throughout the research. It also influenced the approach to ethical issues and concerns that were negotiated in the course of research, as discussed below.