This is a preface to the contributions gathered in the issue. They are the outcome of two workshops held at the University of Trieste in 2014 and 2015 on the subject of pragmatics and pragmatism. Besides the obvious lexical affinity, pragmatics and pragmatism share the basic belief that practice and human action play a crucial role in the explanation of meaning and truth, but also in the solution of ethical questions, etc. The text highlights some philosophical questions related to these fields of research.
