M3: Pragmatics page 36-37

Pragmatics is probably the most difficult aspect of language to learn (and sometimes to teach) and is related to semantics (remember the video?  they said pragmatics is semantics in context, and words can change depending on the context) and is also related to communicative competence (Wright talked about this in Ch. 2 of his book).

Pragmatics can be difficult to learn because pragmatics is cultural.

So you can know what words mean, but if they are used differently because of how a culture has adopted their use or because of certain norms or practices in a culture, then a language learner might not know how to use the word or phrase correctly.  OR the word may not translate right.  So take google translate, for example.  It doesn't always take into account CULTURE when translating a word, so your google translate translation may not be the best or most accurate translation.

PRAGMATICS - is the use of language in social contexts (ie. the real-world use of a word—the contexts in which it is appropriate to use a word, think of this like manners and/or what is socially acceptable)

• This includes “Invisible” or cultural meanings of words and phrases. 
• There are underlying (cultural) rules of interaction needed for successful communication.

Pragmatics is quite complex to learn because to be communicatively competent in a language you need to know how to pronounce the word (phonology), how the word is created (morphology), what that word means (semantics), and how to put the word in a sentence that makes sense (syntax) and THEN you also need to know how to use the language in an appropriate way and that is pragmatics!

This 3 minute video by famous linguist David Crystal gives you a quick overview of pragmatics and why it is so important.

Another perspective on pragmatics by Steven Pinker is presented in this 3 minute video.  Comparing computers and machines to humans and how they use language.  The main difference is pragmatics. Again, this is why computers don't make the best translators.  They don't have the same sophisticated and nuanced knowledge of culture.