The pragmatic is the branch of the Linguistique which is interested in the elements of the language whose significance can be included/understood only by knowing the context. This discipline was born with the XIXe century with the the United States but started to develop especially after the Second world war.
At the XIXe century
In the United States, as of the XIXe century, several thinkers, being based on speculative skepticism, that often the claims with a valid speculative knowledge of reality meet, supported the idea that the thought could never go beyond from a practical knowledge. On a human scale, which would hold place of an accessible truth theoretical, it is the effectiveness: approximately, is true what succeeds, is false what fails. On this basis, William James (1842-1910) developed doctrines which it called Pragmatique (of the Greek `pragma' “action”). His/her friend Charles S. Peirce (1834-1914), employed to him the term close to pragmaticism , and it stressed the activity Sémiotique of the man, therefore on the use of the signs. Quite naturally, its reflection, to which one carries today much of interest, met the linguistic signs and their employment.
At the XXeme century
Disciple of Peirce, his compatriot Charles W. Morris (1901-1979) has, as of before the Second world war and without initially finding much echo, suggested a new classification of principal disciplines studying the linguistic signs:- the Syntaxe treats relationship between signs in the statement complexes
- the Sémantique treats relationship between the signs and reality
- the Pragmatique treats relationship between the signs and their users.
Thus appeared, at least in theory, a new linguistic discipline where their place systematically not only the signs with their components and their referents were to find, but also those which make use of it. It will be noted that in the design of Morris, semantics and pragmatic are supposed to cover quite distinct fields.
However, such as it was practiced during the following time, the semantics, always more or less reduced to the study of the descriptive direction, remained limed in the difficulties announced previously. Ella knew well to make admit that it was essential, in spite of the efforts of American structuralism to do without it; it was made a notable place in the generativism of Noam Chomsky beside syntax, but the techniques inspired of the Phonologie and applied under various names, analyzes semic, analyzes componentielle, etc, did not come to anything to give direction a satisfactory representation. As it often arrives in situations thus blocked, one undertook to circumvent the obstacles that a frontal attack did not manage to make jump. In other words, the field in which one was interested was widened considerably. And, under the impulse of certain philosophers, one remembered the suggestions made by the pragmaticians.
Analyzes ordinary language
On this subject, it is necessary to evoke the current of thought sometimes called new analysis , sometimes school of Oxford , sometimes philosophy of the ordinary language , with the names of Ludwig Wittgenstein (1888-1951) and of John L. Austin (1911-1960). Up to that point, the philosophers rather tended to devote to a criticism in rule natural languages. Since Leibniz (1646-1716), they reproached them their ambiguities, their inconsistancies and their inaccuracies, complained that the philosophers, by employing them, were misled in purely verbal problems and wished to replace them by a perfect language, entirely transparent and univocal, conceived with the image of the mathematical languages. Only, progress of the reflection logico-mathematics, the discovery of fundamental theorems on the incomplétude of the formal systems and reflexivity showed that this ideal was likely any to be never reached. Also philosophers of the ordinary language, then their disciples, modestly studied themselves of the natural languages in their daily employment. This reinforcement counted much for sciences of the language.One above evoked affinities of linguistics with psychology. However, for a long time, the latter, fault of knowing to penetrate in the spirit-brain, preferred to be interested in the perceptible behavior, in order to draw some from the indirect information on the psychological mechanisms which, to control it, use information and stimuli coming from the outside world. Total behavior, the linguistic behavior is a capital part, which distinguishes the man from all the other known alive species.
But to speak is to act. This observation induced a widened design of the language and languages. Accordingly, it is not enough to bring back them to systems of elements called signs and to study them with the image of mathematical constructions. The language and the languages are not made to be implemented and to serve the varied goals of the human activity, the description of reality while being any more but one among others. As this new manner of seeing agreed with the ideas that the philosophers of the ordinary language defended, the name of pragmatic gradually was essential. However, it remains much of uncertainty on the field of the discipline, its methods, its exact place in linguistics, especially compared to semantics.
See too
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