Recently the term critical discourse analysis (CDA) seems to have been preferred and is being used to denote the theory formerly identified as critical linguistics (CL). In the essay, CDA is basically considered as a research program or a ‘school’, evolving over the years, which many researchers find useful and to which they can relate. Most importantly, CDA sees “language as social practice” (Fairclough & Wodak 1997), and considers the “context of language use” to be crucial (Wodak 2000, Benke 2000). The fields of CL and CDA are developing fast, and the ‘critical’ perspective is penetrating in more and more fields of investigation of language usage. The critical dimension of linguistic pragmatics was forcefully advocated by Jacob Mey (1985), and the lack of critical awareness in traditional sociolinguistics was exposed by Williams (1992). In the meantime critical approaches to specific topics in language studies have emerged (see e.g. Meeuwis ed. 1994 on intercultural communication) and more and more researchers are arguing that the study of language should be based on a sound socio-political intellectual basis allowing for better analyses of power in language and language usage (see e.g. Meeuwis & Blommaert 1994). CL and CDA are also developing into interdisciplinary research domains par excellence, and thus offer interesting perspectives for integrated research on language in society.