JOHN DEWEY & PRAGMATISM

JOHN DEWEY (October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952)

An American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been
influential in education and social reform. Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with
the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the fathers of functional psychology.

HISTORY
Pragmatism originated in the United States around 1870, and now presents a growing third
alternative to both analytic and ‘Continental’ philosophical traditions worldwide.
Its first generation was initiated by the so-called ‘classical pragmatists’ Charles Sanders Peirce
(1839–1914), who first defined and defended the view, and his close friend and colleague
William James (1842–1910), who further developed and ably popularized it. During this initial
period, pragmatists focused significantly on theorising inquiry, meaning and the nature of truth,
although James put these themes to work exploring truth in religion.
A second (still termed ‘classical’) generation turned pragmatist philosophy more explicitly
towards politics, education and other dimensions of social improvement, under the immense
influence of John Dewey (1859–1952) and his friend Jane Addams (1860–1935) – who invented
the profession of social work as an expression of pragmatist ideas and was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1931.

PRAGMATICS BY DEFINITION
A subfield of linguistics developed in the late 1970s, which studies how people comprehend and
produce a communicative act or speech act in a concrete speech situation which is usually a
conversation (hence *conversation analysis).
It distinguishes two intents or meanings in each utterance or communicative act of verbal
communication.
(1) The informative intent or the sentence meaning, and the other
(2) The communicative intent or speaker meaning.
The ability to comprehend and produce a communicative act is referred to as pragmatic
competence which often includes one's knowledge about the social distance, social status
between the speakers involved, the cultural knowledge such as politeness, and the linguistic
knowledge explicit and implicit.
FOCUS AND CONTENT
Some of the aspects of language studied in pragmatics include:
Deixis: meaning 'pointing to' something. It is the process of 'pointing' via language. It is
generally acknowledged that perception of and orientation in space are determinant factors in
human action and interaction. As such, speech heavily depends on knowledge of the context:
Where and When is a sentence uttered.
Presupposition: referring to the logical meaning of a sentence or meanings logically associated
with or entailed by a sentence. It is an implicit assumption about the world or background
belief relating to an utterance whose truth is taken for granted in discourse.
Example: Jane no longer writes fiction. Presupposition: Jane once wrote fiction.
Performative: implying that by each utterance a speaker not only says something but also does
certain things: giving information, stating a fact or hinting an attitude. Performative utterances
are sentences which not only describe a given reality, but also change the social reality they are
describing.
Implicature: referring to an indirect or implicit meaning of an utterance derived from context
that is not present from its conventional use.
Example: saying the frame is nice and implying I don't like the picture in it.

SIGNIFICANCE OF PRAGMATICS
The education of pragmatics is necessary and important in our globalized world. The reason is
that English is currently used by people in the world for interaction and communication with
each other in order to do international trade or participate in the academic conferences.
For avoiding miscommunication caused by cultural difference, being familiar with diverse
cultures and pragmatics is essential. Studies of Pragmatics emphasize the appropriateness in
inter-cultural discourses.
Through learning pragmatics, the English speakers' intercultural communication competence
should be raised. Their Pragmatic Competence would be better because of knowing cultural
differences and being aware of the significance in appropriate languages. In other words, the
teaching and learning of pragmatics would release the difficulties of international
communications for both native and non-native speakers.