Pragmatics is the study of context-dependent meaning in human language and communication. It is a key subfield of Discourse Analysis, a method used to understand the subtleties of how speakers use language in real-world contexts to convey complex meanings, accomplish social actions, and navigate interpersonal relationships. Pragmatics is a philosophical project that seeks to understand how we manage to communicate with one another given the many constraints of human interaction. It has a number of different branches, such as conversational implicature theory, speech act theory, and ambiguity theory.
The term pragmatic is also often used to describe a philosophical position that prioritizes results and consequences over idealistic beliefs and values. For example, a person may decide to settle a lawsuit because it will save them time and money and keep their reputation intact. This person is being pragmatic in that they consider all the possible consequences of their decision.
Philosophers have long debated the merits of pragmatism and its relationship to other philosophical traditions. It is a growing third alternative to both analytic and Continental philosophies worldwide. The first generation of pragmatist thinkers were led by Charles Sanders Peirce and his associates Josiah Royce (1855-1916) and William James (1839-1910). These early pragmatists applied their philosophy to politics, education and other dimensions of social improvement and were often associated with the American Pragmatism School.
In recent years, new philosophies of pragmatics have been developed by philosophers like Robert Brandom (1904-1989), who sought to revitalize pragmatist ideas and make them more accessible to modern audiences. He advocated that pragmatics be viewed as a philosophy of action, a discipline that integrates elements from analytic philosophy with those from the pragmatist tradition. He argued that a rethinking of the nature of human understanding and a recognition of the central role that language plays in it is necessary if pragmatism is to be fully appreciated.
Modern pragmatics is a multidisciplinary field that spans the fields of linguistics, cognitive psychology, and sociology. A key concern is the way in which language and the context in which it is spoken affects its interpretation by listeners. This issue is explored through a variety of methodologies, including discourse analysis and experimental pragmatics.
In experimental pragmatics, researchers typically present participants with a series of stimuli that vary in some way, and they then measure the ways in which the participant interprets those stimuli. The results of these studies are then analyzed to draw conclusions about how people normally interpret the language they hear. However, a key problem with this approach is that there are many factors that influence pragmatic interpretations within any experimental situation. These include the many different independent variables that are usually tested in an experiment, as well as within-individual differences that occur between and among individuals. The overall goal of experimental pragmatics should be to better reflect the dynamic, interactive, and varied nature of the human pragmatic experience and to explore the actual complex meanings that people infer from utterances in diverse situations.