Jurgen Habermas "What is universal pragmatics?"

One of the most difficult tasks for any professional communicator is identifying and negotiating the political shoals in an organization. In his essay "What is universal pragmatics?" Habermas (1979) describes a broad, universal concept of pragmatics (the study of language use in a specific situation), one that is useful for analyzing how power affects organizational communication. By exploiting the sociological aspect of Habermas' universal pragmatics, communicators can use his theory to understand how power affects communication in the workplace. I briefly describe Habermas' theory, modify his theory to relate more specifically to communication in an organization, and provide a brief example illustrating the theory's usefulness.