Pragmatic focuses on language use in context, with the notion that meaning is partly determined by contextual information. It encompasses the study of speech acts, conversational implicature, deixis and politeness strategies, among other topics. It is a broad and rich field, with implications for understanding how speakers are understood, navigating social relationships and power dynamics, and analyzing discourse structure and coherence. It also illuminates the nuances of communication by uncovering implicit meaning, addressing speaker-listener interpretation, and revealing the complex ways in which context shapes linguistic meaning and use.
The term pragmatic is derived from the Greek word progma, meaning “practical.” It refers to a philosophy or policy that takes direct practical consequences into account rather than abstract theoretical principles. In a more narrow sense, it can be applied to an individual’s behavior or actions, such as taking a damage control approach to war rather than a strict adherence to the law of retaliation.
As a discipline, pragmatics spans several academic fields, including linguistics, sociology, philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. This interdisciplinary nature allows for rich cross-pollination of ideas and methodologies, further illuminating the many facets of human language and the dynamic interplay between it and the cultural, social, and psychological dimensions of our lives.
One of the main distinctions between pragmatics and semantics is that semantics deals with the conventional or literal significance of words, sentences, or whole texts, whereas pragmatics examines the additional meanings that are worked out in the course of utterance interpretation, primarily in the light of relevant context. This distinction is sometimes described as the gap between far-side and near-side pragmatics, where far-side pragmatics emphasizes perception and rule-following and near-side pragmatics focuses on the specificity of each individual utterance.
While there are differences between the various approaches to pragmatics, all share certain fundamental concerns. First, they all acknowledge that the true meaning of an utterance depends on the speaker’s intention and the particular situation in which it is delivered. This is the central idea behind a communicative intention model (CID), in which a speaker’s overall goal or purpose is considered in the evaluation of an utterance, regardless of whether it is intended to be taken literally.
In terms of methodology, there are three different general tendencies within contemporary pragmatics: those who see it, in Grice’s vein, as a philosophical project; those who concentrate on its interaction with grammar; and those who view it as an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation. In terms of measurement, there are several different pragmatic cluster solutions and associated labels that have been developed, with varying degrees of consensus on how to determine which ones should be included in the final pragmatic measure rating. This research provides a solid foundation on which to build further pragmatic measures, particularly in the form of a rubric that can be used to evaluate implementation determinants and outcomes. However, a number of limitations need to be addressed in the development and further refinement of pragmatic measurements.