Abstract
The purpose of the article is to clarify the origin of the term "pragmatics", the most indisputable definitions of linguistic pragmatics and the scope of pragmatics study in European scientific investigations. Pragmatics includes a number of issues connected with a speaker, addressee, their interaction in communication, the situation of communication. It covers a wide range of questions that are the subject-matter of the following branches of Linguistics: Semantics, Stylistics, Sociolinguistics, Psycholinguistics and Discourse analysis.