Pragmatic is an adjective describing a person who focuses on practical and reasonable solutions to problems. Being pragmatic is a matter of weighing options in terms of their results and consequences. A person who is pragmatic would choose to avoid legal complications by complying with the law rather than fighting it.
The term pragmatic is used in philosophy of language, and it is one of three major areas of linguistic study along with semantics, syntax, and semiotics. While the other fields concentrate on rules that determine the literal linguistic meaning of expressions, pragmatics focuses on how contextual factors influence the use of those expressions.
A common misperception is that pragmatics is simply the study of how people use words in a natural way. In truth, it is a broad field that encompasses many different aspects of language use. For example, pragmatics includes studies on the effect of culture and society on language use. It also covers the social and physical aspects of language. This makes it very difficult to define pragmatics in a straightforward and simple manner.
Some scholars see pragmatics as a form of philosophical inquiry that investigates how the conventions of a particular language affect the meaning that speakers draw from utterances. However, there are many different views of pragmatics that vary by discipline and methodology. For instance, some scholars focus on the relationship between semantics and pragmatics; others concentrate on the interaction of grammar with pragmatics; while still others take a more empirical psychological approach to pragmatics.
In pragmatics, the distinction between literal and non-literal interpretation is seen as a fundamental issue. Some people view this as a difference in meaning at the speaker’s level; when a speaker’s intended meaning is closed to conventional meaning it is considered literal and when it deviates from convention it is considered non-literal. Other scholars view the distinction as a continuum, with some parts of speech falling on the more literal side and other portions falling on the more pragmatic side.
The word pragmatic is often misspelled as “pragmatics,” “progmatic,” and “pragmantic.” These errors are usually due to an inconsistent spelling-to-sound congruency in the English language, which creates unique phonetic sounds for words.
Although the meaning of the word pragmatic is fairly consistent across most English-speaking countries, the pronunciation and etymology differ slightly from country to country. In the United States, for example, pragmatic is pronounced as PAH-gihm-tic. However, in some regions of the world, such as England and Australia, pragmatic is pronounced as prag-mah-tic. The different pronunciations are mainly a result of regional variations in the English dialect. This is true of many words in the English language, as most of its dialects are based on the same root. In addition, the different pronunciations of English have led to some lexical differences. For example, the term ‘ad hoc’ is most often pronounced with an accent on the first syllable and the word ‘abracadabra’ is usually pronounced with an accent on the second syllable.