Some preliminary remarks on theoretical pragmatics
The term pragmatics has been used, as is well known, by Morris and Carnap to denote that branch of semiotics which deals with the relation between a language and its users. As such I don't like the term very much. But one might also define it to be that branch which deals with the relation between languages and actions or processes. This seems more appropriate to me. In any case, whatever the definition, there is a basic connection between programming languages and pragmatics, as pointed out by Gorn. I devoted a paragraph to this subject in my talk at the IFIP Congress 1965 entitled “Linguistic Problems in Programming Theory.”