Pragmatic is a term that describes a person or organization as being practical and reasonable. It is often used in reference to the decisions and actions that people make to get things done in real life. Pragmatic can also refer to an approach or strategy in business, medicine, political science, psychology and other fields. A pragmatic approach to problem solving is generally more successful than an idealistic one. For example, it is more likely that a person will settle a lawsuit if they can do so without spending more money than it would cost to litigate. In addition, a pragmatic approach to saving wildlife is more likely to be effective than an idealistic one.
In philosophy, pragmatism is often seen as a response to the skeptical tradition that dates back to Descartes. The pragmatist insistence that all knowledge is tentative and subject to revision is often contrasted with the skeptics’ claim that nothing can be known for sure.
Another philosophical discipline that has a relationship with pragmatism is ordinary language philosophy, which focuses on the functional role of language in the world rather than the abstract relations between words and concepts. Behaviorism in psychology and functionalism in sociology have also ties to pragmatism.
Some researchers in pragmatics have focused on what is referred to as formulaic language. This is recurrent strings of words or phrases that are frequently used for particular pragmatic purposes. Examples include “Yes, I will” and “You know.” Pragmatic research into formulaic language has a wide range of applications in speech communication and interaction, cognitive-science disciplines like psychology, and even some areas of medicine and psychiatry.
Other scholars have looked at the way we interpret an utterance’s semantic meaning and its conversational implicatures. These are the features that are triggered by the speaker’s communicative intentions. Pragmatic research in this area is sometimes referred to as pragmatic semantics.
Applied fields like public administration and management studies have been influenced by the pragmatist emphasis on the connection between thought and action. For example, public administrators are responsible for making programs work in a diverse and complex society. In many cases, they are required to work with citizens and other government agencies. Often, the pragmatist ideas of John Dewey, William James and Charles Sanders Peirce have helped these administrators craft theories to solve problems in their day-to-day interactions with citizens. Similarly, many academics in the field of leadership study have incorporated the pragmatist notion of a participative democracy into their work.