Pragmatic is a word that describes someone or something that takes a practical, realistic approach to situations and problems. People who are pragmatic tend to prioritize the likelihood of a desired outcome or solution over idealistic principles. They are able to put their emotions aside and see the big picture, but also know how to get down to business when necessary. They can make decisions quickly and calmly in crisis situations, without getting bogged down in details or becoming overwhelmed by the scale of a problem.
The philosophy of pragmatism originated in the early 1870s among a group of Harvard-educated men who met for informal philosophical discussions in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This group included proto-positivist Chauncey Wright, future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and two then-fledgling philosophers who went on to become the first self-conscious pragmatists: Charles Sanders Peirce, an influential logician and mathematician; and William James, a psychologist with a medical degree.
A key insight of pragmatism is that it is impossible to understand reality or even formulate meaningful goals without taking into account one’s context. Essentially, all of our experiences and knowledge shape our understanding of reality, and therefore, our goals, values, and priorities. This perspective, which focuses on what works rather than on what should be, has made pragmatism popular with many people who consider themselves to be pragmatic.
As the science of pragmatics continues to evolve, researchers have developed a range of different theories about the way we use language in context. The most common view is that all utterances have pragmatic meanings, and that these meanings are determined by a person’s social, cultural, and situational beliefs.
Another way to think about pragmatics is to look at the role of ambiguity and turn-taking in conversation. Ambiguity is an intrinsic feature of human languages, and our pragmatic knowledge allows us to disambiguate ambiguous utterances to facilitate communication. Our pragmatics also help us to politely hedge a request, read between the lines, negotiate turn-taking norms in conversation, and navigate ambiguity in context.
There are a number of challenges associated with trying to understand how we use language pragmatically. For example, it is difficult to design experimental studies that are free of the influences that people’s contexts and expectations have on their pragmatic performances. In addition, it is not clear how linguistic and cognitive development are related to pragmatic abilities.
However, despite these challenges, research on pragmatics has continued to grow and thrive within the larger field of cognitive psychology. There are now many groups of linguists, philosophers, and psycholinguists who share the goal of developing better understanding of how language is used and understood in naturalistic contexts. They are working to address a variety of fundamental questions, including how our semantics interact with our pragmatics and how we might use this understanding to help people improve their communication in real-world settings. They are also trying to identify the conditions under which pragmatic phenomena are most likely to occur, and to make predictions about the behavior of individual people in these scenarios.