Pragmatic is a term used to describe a person’s ability to communicate effectively in various situations. People who are pragmatic have a strong understanding of the context and meaning behind the words they use. They also understand the importance of nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language. Pragmatic language is essential for professional settings, as employers look for employees who can collaborate with their coworkers and adapt their communication style to the needs of each situation.
The word pragmatic comes from a Greek verb that means “to do.” It has two broad meanings: the first is an approach to life or work that focuses on practical results and consequences. The second is a particular kind of philosophical perspective that emphasizes the way in which actions are shaped by the values, beliefs, and assumptions of those who take them. This pragmatic philosophy was developed by William James and other members of the pragmatist school in American philosophy and social science during the first half of the 20th century.
Originally, the pragmatists were concerned with the nature of inquiry and the meaning of truth. They emphasized the plasticity of reality and criticized doctrines that relegate change and action to an inferior position in the hierarchy of human values. Pragmatists such as Dewey were especially critical of moral and metaphysical philosophies that treat humans as mere products of chance and history rather than as agents who shape and control it.
In the early 1900s, pragmatism shifted away from theorising about inquiry and meaning to exploring a wide range of social issues such as education, community development and public health. This pragmatist approach to the social sciences was influenced by the likes of John Dewey, George Herbert Mead and pioneering African-American philosopher W.E.B Du Bois and contributed to the development of a new type of research method called participant-action research.
Today, pragmatics is the field of study that examines speakers’ communicative intentions, the uses of language that require such intentions and the strategies that hearers employ to determine what these intentions and acts are, so that they can understand what the speaker intends to communicate. In addition to the linguistic dimensions of pragmatics, the study also considers social and cultural factors that influence the ways in which language is used.
A new generation of pragmatists has evolved, and neo-pragmatism is now the dominant form of pragmatic philosophy in Anglo-American philosophy departments. It combines the concern with pragmatic questions of truth and method inherited from Peirce, Dewey and James with a rejection of metaphysical realism that is a necessary condition for a correspondence theory of truth (e.g. Putnam 1981). It frames truth in terms of ideal warranted assertibility, which is similar to but much less absolutist than the different versions of the relativistic theory of truth offered by Peirce and James. It is also able to accommodate and draw on a number of well-developed non-correspondence theories of truth, such as disquotationalism, minimalism and deflationism, which were not available to earlier pragmatic philosophers.