Pragmatic is the word describing an approach or attitude that puts practical considerations before theoretical ideas. This approach allows us to be more open to options and courses of action that may not necessarily conform with our ideological vision of how things should work, but are at least feasible to achieve, given the resources available. It is also often seen as a necessary and positive trait in dealing with the limitations of our environment. In the context of linguistics, pragmatics is the study of context-dependent aspects of linguistic meaning. In general, pragmatics deals with the notion that significanc changes from context to context owing to a variety of factors, including lexical and semantic ambiguity, indexicality, speech act theory, and conversational implicature. In the philosophy of language, pragmatism is a philosophical view that developed in the United States around 1870 and currently presents a growing third alternative to both analytic and continental traditions worldwide. The term was coined by Charles Sanders Peirce and later popularised by William James (1842-1910). Peirce and James presented pragmatism as a method for settling metaphysical disputes that might otherwise be interminable by finding out what difference they make in real life, or at least by showing whether one side’s position is any more or less correct than the other’s.
Although pragmatism is sometimes considered a form of idealism, it is not always so. Indeed, some pragmatists, such as Josiah Royce and Robert M. Pirsig, embraced progressive social ideals and were in fact inspired by the thought of Dewey. More recently, a number of liberatory philosophical projects, such as feminist and disability studies, medical ethics, ecological ethics, and Native American philosophy have looked to pragmatism for their inspiration. The pragmatist concept of the community of inquiry also provides a basis for Habermas’ discourse ethics, which has made important contributions to political philosophy, public policy and the law, the philosophy of science and religion.
The field of pragmatism is highly diverse and covers the full range of human communication, but it is particularly well-suited to examining issues such as the influence of context on meaning and the role of speech acts in expressing intentions and making commitments. It is therefore a natural extension of both functionalist approaches to language and cognitive psychology, as well as of the more traditional areas of linguistics. The International Pragmatic Association was founded in 1986 to represent the work of linguists involved in pragmatic research and teaching. Amongst the most prominent subfields are formal and computational pragmatics; theoretical and applied; intercultural, clinical and experimental pragmatics; neuropragmatics; and historical pragmatics. Each of these subfields examines the different ways in which a particular context can affect the meaning and function of language, as well as the strategies that speakers employ to determine what those intentions are. The study of pragmatics also reveals the underlying assumptions and beliefs that speakers bring to their communication. It is these that are at the heart of a philosophical approach to pragmatics called Relevance Theory.