Pragmatic is a field of study that examines how language is used in different social contexts. It also focuses on the interpretation of verbal expressions and their meaning. For example, when someone says, “gosh, look at the time,” they may not be referring to the actual time. They could be implying that they need to leave or end the conversation. Pragmatics can be helpful in understanding social cues and interactions.
People who are pragmatic think about how things work and are more interested in practical outcomes. They tend to focus on what is, instead of what should or could be. They are not concerned with emotions or feelings, but rather with results and consequences. Pragmatics can help improve communication with others by giving them the tools to express themselves in more effective ways.
The term pragmatics comes from the Latin verb praegere, which means to be willing to do or to try something. The first use of this word in English was in the title of a book by Chauncey Wright, published in 1872. Wright was a member of a club of Harvard-educated philosophers who met for informal discussions in the early 1860s. Other members of the group included proto-positivists Chauncey Wright and Oliver Wendell Holmes, future Supreme Court Justice William James, and pragmatic philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
As Western societies undergo rapid demographic transformation, it’s likely that linguistic pragmatics will grow increasingly less euro-centric and more global in its scope and relevance. However, the key to maintaining its academic validity as a subdivision of linguistics is not in defining how context affects the semiotics of idioms, but rather in exposing the mechanism of how these idioms are adjusted to correlative with currently predominant socio-cultural discourses.
Using scientometric analysis, we have retrieved and analysed 6554 documents from Scopus, 1167 from WOS and 11,230 from Lens to map the past, present and evolving issues in pragmatics. This has enabled us to identify the top ten authors in pragmatics and illustrate their impact on the discipline with illustrative diagrams and maps.
To develop pragmatic skills, it’s important to set goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound. Moreover, it is crucial to consider the developmental level of the individual when setting pragmatic skills goals. Young children may need to start with simple turn-taking goals, while older adults might need to work on interpreting complex social cues.
A pragmatist is someone who follows common sense and believes in taking the shortest path to a goal. They are often more interested in achieving a goal than in following the rules to get there. Moreover, they are usually not afraid to be flexible and take into consideration the opinions of others in order to achieve their goal. For example, a pragmatist might be willing to change their own plans or ideas in the interest of completing a project on time. As a result, they are more focused on the outcome of their actions and are less worried about how it might negatively affect those around them.