Pragmatic relates to language use in communication and interaction, particularly the way a speaker interprets or perceives another person’s utterance. Understanding pragmatics is essential to intercultural understanding, as cultural norms and expectations differ widely across the world. The value placed on directness in Western cultures may be considered rude or bizarre in other countries, where subtlety and indirectness are prized. Mastering the idioms and cultural rules of a new language is likewise an important step to effective communication.
Generally speaking, the word pragmatic is used to praise decisions or actions that are seen as practical and reasonable. It can also be applied to the study of human and animal behavior and to how people respond to events. The philosophy of pragmatism is an influential one in education, leadership studies, public administration, and research methodology, and it’s often incorporated into educational theory.
Philosophical pragmatism is an outlook on life that emphasizes the connection between thought and action. It rejects absolutist and dogmatic views of knowledge, asserting that beliefs become true or false based on how useful they are in coping with reality.
In the language classroom, a teacher might incorporate pragmatics by creating activities that focus on how people make requests in different situations. For example, students might be asked to choose how they would respond to a request from someone who is elderly, angry, or rude, and discuss the rationale behind their choice.
While teaching vocabulary and common phrases is a critical part of the English language curriculum, teachers should also strive to include pragmatics in their instruction. A growing body of research in the field suggests that people understand a great deal more about the meanings of utterances than just the words themselves. Pragmatics refers to the way a speaker or listener interprets the meaning of an expression or gesture, and it can be influenced by a number of factors, including the context in which the utterance is heard, the speaker’s emotions, and the speaker’s intentions.
It is impossible to fully understand an utterance without taking into account these factors, which are known as near-side pragmatics. Near-side pragmatics includes, but is not limited to, resolution of ambiguity and vagueness, the reference of proper names, indexicals and demonstratives, and anaphors.
Experimental pragmatics studies often use tasks that involve interpreting complex forms of pragmatic meaning, such as drawing a scalar implicature or comprehending an ironic message. These tasks require a high level of cognitive effort, and they can lead to significantly different results than might be expected by scholars who favor either the traditional view of semantics or the pragmatics of relevance. This wide variation in experimental pragmatic outcomes is a major factor in the current crisis over replication in psychology, with many researchers arguing that any deviation from an empirically obtained result should raise concerns about its validity.