Pragmatic is a word used to describe people or things that are concerned with what works, rather than what should be. It is often contrasted with idealism, where one tries to pursue only the ideal course of action. Those who are pragmatic take into account the realities of situations, and sometimes make compromises in order to get things done. The word comes from the Latin pragmata, meaning “to do.”
The discipline of pragmatics attempts to address questions about how we use language, in what contexts, and what effects our words have. A central concern is the role of pragmatics in the emergence of knowledge, and the extent to which truth is constrained by reality. In recent decades, pragmatics has become increasingly applied in the areas of clinical psychology and linguistics. For example, cognitive pragmatics seeks to understand how a person’s beliefs can be modified in light of new evidence or experiences. A more general perspective on pragmatics has been developed by John L. Savage, who defined it as “the study of the way language is used in real communication.”
It may seem that a natural place for pragmatics would be the intersection between semantics and syntax, with semantics dealing with meaning and syntax dealing with the structure of sentences. However, the boundaries between these disciplines are not always clearly drawn. For instance, the relationship between semantics and pragmatics is contested by relevance theory (see Devitt 1998), which takes pragmatics to be the study of how a speaker understands their own utterances, and explains how they communicate this information to others. Thus, relevance theory is a pragmatist view of the connection between semantics and pragmatics.
Some philosophers have also viewed pragmatics as a kind of bridge between analytic and ‘Continental’ philosophical traditions. The first generation of pragmatists, known as the classical pragmatists, focused on theorising inquiry and meaning. The defining figures of this movement were Charles Sanders Peirce and his Harvard colleague William James, who argued for a pragmatic approach to epistemology, and Josiah Royce, whose ‘problem-centred pedagogy’ uses a pragmatist theory of inquiry for its structure.
A second generation of pragmatists turned the ideas of the classic pragmatists towards politics, education and other dimensions of social improvement. It was led by John Dewey and Jane Addams, who were both influenced by pragmatist notions of practical wisdom and social progress. Some contemporary liberatory philosophical projects, such as feminism, ecological thought and Native American philosophy, also look to pragmatism for inspiration.