We explain what pragmatics is in a colloquial sense and provide everyday examples. We also explain pragmatics in philosophy and linguistics. Please read other MTV articles for more information. If you share it, it will be of little help to us.
What is pragmatics?
In our daily lives, we use the adjective pragmatic to refer to an attitude in life that prioritizes the useful, the practical, and the concrete, rather than the abstract, the theoretical, and the ideal.
We call people with this trait pragmatic, and they are generally considered ideal for making efficient, immediate decisions, as they tend not to go off on tangents or get bogged down in useless considerations. At the same time, they are usually considered more “earthly” people, less prone to reflection and imagination.
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However, this usage is merely a colloquial and common sense of the word, whose origins date back to the Greek pragmatikós, which was used in ancient times to describe people skilled in negotiation. The term can be used, broadly speaking, to refer to any approach to any matter, as long as it prioritizes the practical over the theoretical.
On the other hand, pragmatism is a philosophical doctrine born in the United States at the end of the 19th century, the fruit of the thought of Charles Sanders Pierce (1839-1914), William James (1842-1910), and John Dewey (1859-1952).
According to its creators, it was more a way of thinking than a philosophical movement, whose central tenet can be summarized as the idea that theory must be extracted from practice (and not the other way around), and then applied to practice itself (that is, to its improvement) in order to achieve intelligent practice.
Pragmatism, true to its pragmatic attitude, did not become a theoretical movement but was applied unevenly to different areas of human knowledge: education, psychology, law, politics, etc., always seeking the recovery of reason and human values to achieve intelligent, liberating, and responsible actions in all areas of human life.
This movement dominated thought in the United States until World War II, when it gave way to neopositivism and various religious conceptions of the spiritual life.
Examples of Pragmatism in Everyday Life
A pragmatic attitude in everyday life is one that focuses on the practical resolution of problems rather than theoretically pondering what should be done. The following situations may be examples of this:
- When cooking, a pragmatic person prepares a meal from the food in the pantry, even if they have to disobey or reinvent the recipe, rather than following it to the letter or discarding it if ingredients are missing.
- A pragmatic person prefers to buy the most useful and necessary instruments for their work, rather than those that look neater or that might be ornamental.
- When a political party decides to make a pact with a party with an opposing ideological tendency, in which both will benefit from power shares, it can be said that they are practicing politics in a very pragmatic way.
Basic Principles of the Philosophical School of Pragmatism
The fundamental postulate of philosophical pragmatism was the one enunciated by Pierce in the 19th century as the “principle of pragmatism.” It dictates that the meaning of truth can only be determined by its usefulness in life. This means that the sole value of things is the value that determines their usefulness, their ability to resolve problems in concrete life.
Thus, for example, philosophical discussions are resolved, from a pragmatic point of view, by comparing their “practical” consequences: truth, then, is whatever works best for us. That is, what satisfies the subjective interests of the individual.
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Language Pragmatics
In the field of linguistics, on the other hand, pragmatics or pragmalinguistics is a discipline that studies the context of the meanings of language; that is, it studies the situation in which the linguistic act takes place, taking into account the influence and relevance of all non-linguistic factors in communication.
Thus, pragmatics studies everything that accompanies language: gestures, proxemics, the physical elements present in the communicative situation, the knowledge shared by speakers, etc. Everything that does not concern semantics, because it is not linguistic (that is, because it has nothing to do with language itself), falls within the area of interest of pragmatics.
References
All the information we offer is supported by authoritative and up-to-date bibliographic sources, which ensure reliable content in line with our editorial principles.
- Pragmatic in the Dictionary of the Spanish Language of the Royal Spanish Academy.
- Etymology of Pragmatic in the Online Spanish Etymological Dictionary.
- Pragmatism in Wikipedia.
- Pragmatics in Wikipedia.
- Pragmatism in the Critical Dictionary of the Social Sciences.
- Pragmatism in the Ibero-American Dictionary of the Philosophy of Education.
