Pragmatic is a way of thinking about the ways we use language. Its focus is on the practical aspects of communication and the way we deal with the realities of the world around us. It also explores the concept of how we can achieve our goals in a practical and meaningful manner.
In this month’s Teacher’s Corner, we take a closer look at pragmatics and why it is such an important element to incorporate in the classroom. We also share some fun activities and resources that are great for developing your students’ pragmatic skills.
The word pragmatic is taken from Latin praegmaticus, which is from the Greek pragmatikos meaning “practical.” Pragmatics is not only concerned with what we say and how we say it but also with the context in which we say it and the consequences of our words and actions. The discipline of pragmatics is a vast and varied one, with subfields as diverse as the philosophies that inspired it. For example, there is formal and computational pragmatics; theoretical and applied; game-theoretic, clinical and experimental pragmatics; and intercultural and neuropragmatics.
The first self-consciously pragmatist philosophers were Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who was a logician and mathematician, and William James (1842-1910), a psychologist armed with a medical degree. They formed a loose group known as The Metaphysical Club, and were joined by other Harvard-educated thinkers including proto-positivist Chauncey Wright and future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.
Their philosophy was meant to reform the tradition of empiricism, though some pragmatists have gone so far as to recommend its abolition. In fact, there is no such thing as a pragmatist party line; pragmatists have differed wildly in their views on major issues, such as truth, realism, skepticism, perception, justification, fallibilism, and the function of philosophy.
In addition, many pragmatists are epistemological relativists, while others oppose such relativism (e.g., Joseph Margolis).
Another aspect of pragmatism is its anti-foundationalism. Unlike the empiricists of old who believed that their experiences could serve as a basic source of justification, pragmatists have always emphasized that our experiences are theory-laden. Hence, we can never have pure, unsullied, direct sensory experiences. Rather, our epistemic access to the world is necessarily mediated by concepts and descriptions.
Some pragmatists have argued that this makes pragmatism an anti-foundationalist form of relativism, while others have defended the view by arguing that a theory is not epistemologically independent from its practice. This is an issue that continues to be debated today.