Pragmatics

Also called Social communication, Social use of language, Pragmatic language

Using language socially: taking turns, staying on topic, knowing what to say to whom. The rules nobody teaches and everyone is marked on.

What it is

Pragmatics is language in use: how you start a conversation, take turns, stay on topic, adjust for who you're talking to, read a hint, know when someone has stopped listening, and end. It's separate from vocabulary and grammar. A person can have perfect sentences and struggle with pragmatics, and the reverse.

It covers a lot of ground: greeting, requesting, commenting, asking for clarification, repairing a misunderstanding, understanding sarcasm and idiom, matching tone to setting. Most of it is learned by immersion and never spelled out, which is exactly why it's hard for anyone who doesn't pick it up that way.

Who it can help

Understanding pragmatics helps with autistic children and adults most obviously, though be careful with the framing: the double empathy research suggests autistic people communicate perfectly well with each other, and the breakdown is between styles rather than a deficit in one. It also matters for people with ADHD, after brain injury, with developmental language disorder, and for every AAC user, whose devices are usually full of nouns and empty of the words you need to interrupt, joke or disagree.

It is not a reason to drill a child in eye contact. Making eye contact is a cultural preference, not a communication skill, and forcing it costs attention that could be spent on the message.

How it works

Pragmatic skills start before words. Joint attention and turn-taking in the first year are pragmatics without language. By around two, children use words for several purposes: requesting, protesting, greeting, showing. By around four they adjust how they talk to a baby versus an adult. School age brings narrative, staying on topic, and understanding that "can you pass the salt?" isn't a question about ability.

Therapists sometimes list communicative functions: requesting, refusing, commenting, asking, greeting, sharing feelings. A person whose whole repertoire is requesting has a pragmatics problem even if every request is fluent. In AAC this is a vocabulary design issue: if the board can't say "that's rubbish" or "your turn", the person can't do the pragmatics, whatever they're capable of.

Getting started

List what the person can currently do with communication, not what they can say. Can they refuse? Greet? Comment? Ask you to stop? Tease? If a function is missing, provide the means and model it: "no way", "boring", "look at this" are worth more than another ten nouns (comments, saying no).

Narrate the invisible rules when they matter, plainly and without judgement: "Ben's looking at his phone, that usually means he's finished talking." Comic strip conversations draw this out on paper. Practise real conversations rather than scripts: scripts train the script.

And check your own pragmatics. Adults ask AAC users a stream of yes/no questions and then note that the person "only answers yes/no". Ask fewer questions and leave gaps.

Where to get help

The National Autistic Society explains autistic communication and the double empathy idea well. Speech and Language UK covers social communication in its ages and stages. A speech and language therapist can assess pragmatics; in school the SENCO is the route to one.