Pragmatic is the ability to make decisions based on real-world results and consequences. Pragmatic people tend to be very skeptical of strategies that are too grand or “blue-sky” in nature, and are quick to point out flaws in plans. While this can sometimes zap morale, it also helps teams to avoid pursuing plans that are unfeasible or have already been tried and failed. Pragmatic individuals typically play the role of the Problem Solver in team settings, and can be a critical source of practical feedback for others.
Pragmatism is a research paradigm, and pragmatists are typically associated with using the methodological approach that works best for a particular research problem (Greene and Caracelli 2003; Maxcy 2003; Teddlie and Tashakkori 2009). Pragmatism stands in the middle of the paradigm continuum between Positivism, which advocates quantitative methods and deductive reasoning, and Constructivism, which advocates qualitative methods and inductive reasoning. Pragmatism is a natural fit for social work and social justice-oriented research on issues such as equity, equality, and freedom from oppression (Collins 2017).
Unlike the classical pragmatists of Peirce and James, who framed truth in terms of ideal warranted assertibility before all audiences, modern pragmatists focus more on the conversational implicatures of an utterance rather than the semantic meaning of the description. Moreover, they consider the context and speaker’s plan for the utterance to be more important than the semantics of the utterance itself.
This pragmatic focus on the conversational implications of an utterance has led to a more flexible and less rigid approach to pragmatics. Contemporary approaches to pragmatics are classified by whether they focus on the interplay between semantics and pragmatics, whether they view pragmatics as a philosophical project with its own sub-fields of study, or whether they take a more empirical psychological approach to utterance interpretation (Carston 2005).
A key element in pragmatic theory is that not all contexts are equal. This has led to the development of a more dynamic model of discourse processing that incorporates an interaction between three different levels of meaning: the linguistic, the intentional and the pragmatic. The linguistic level refers to the lexical and syntactic level, while the intentional level refers to the meta-level of intention that is shared by the utterance’s addressee.
The pragmatic model of discourse processing is used in the fields of philosophy, linguistics, computer science, psychology, and sociology. Pragmatic theory is especially useful in examining social and cultural dynamics and the interplay between language, thought, and action.
A core driver of pragmatism is Openness to Experience, and a person who exhibits this trait is often willing to abandon traditional beliefs or procedures in pursuit of something more effective. For example, an individual might kill a creditor to avoid paying his debts, but this is not pragmatic because the murder causes harm to other community members in the form of loss of income and the deprivation of a valuable member of society. Similarly, a business might change its product in response to customer feedback.