Pragmatic refers to a person’s ability to understand and effectively use language for social communication in everyday life. Pragmatic language includes a wide range of aspects such as vocabulary, syntax, and semantics, all of which are important for the effective expression of thoughts and ideas in social interaction. Pragmatic language is often influenced by cultural factors and the context in which an individual uses language. Children’s pragmatic skills are developed and refined as they participate in family, peer, and school interactions that provide them with the opportunity and motivation to learn how to use language efficiently and strategically.
Pragmatic theory attempts to analyze and understand these socially-based aspects of language use, by focusing on how an utterance is understood in a specific context. As the field has grown, various theories of pragmatics have emerged. Some are more philosophic in nature, while others focus on how semantics and grammar interact with pragmatics. The differences in the philosophies of pragmatics are reflected in different approaches to research on the topic.
Generally speaking, those who approach pragmatics from a philosophical standpoint tend to see it as a discipline that examines the meaning of words and sentences based on their use in a particular context. Those who approach pragmatics from the perspective of a scientific discipline, such as linguistics or psychology, tend to view it as an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation.
The theoretical distinction that many theorists make between semantics and pragmatics involves the nature of the facts that determine what a sentence means. This distinction has led to a number of different philosophies and models. The most prevalent models are those that have developed from the work of Grice and his followers.
One of the most common debates in pragmatics centers around the extent to which a sentence’s semantic meaning and its pragmatic properties are independent of one another. Other issues involving semantics and pragmatics include the resolution of ambiguity, vagueness, and indexicality, the reference of proper names and other descriptors, anaphors, and conversational implicatures.
It is important to note that pragmatics does not necessarily imply a disregard for moral or ethical principles. In fact, a person can be considered pragmatic and moral at the same time by taking into consideration the results of their actions for everyone involved in the situation. For example, if a person kills their creditor and gets away with it, they may be pragmatic from the point of view that they did not have to pay their debt, but they are not morally or ethically pragmatic for the rest of society, as they have deprived the community of a productive member.
As the field of pragmatics has expanded, so have the areas in which it is applied. For example, the study of pragmatics has been used to evaluate the effectiveness of public policy and law enforcement techniques, to teach language to non-native speakers, and to explore the impact that different cultures have on a person’s use of language.