The term ‘clinical pragmatics’ is used here to refer to the study of pragmatic ability in individuals with communication disorders. It covers the description and classification of pragmatic impairments, their elucidation in terms of various pragmatic, linguistic, psychological and neurological theories, and their assessment and treatment. Although the term ‘pragmatic impairment’ is most commonly used with reference to conditions such as right hemisphere brain damage and autism, which affect socio-cognitive more than linguistic functioning, pathologies of speech and language such as aphasia and developmental language disorder may also be regarded as having a pragmatic dimension to the extent that they restrict the choices available to an individual to produce and/or comprehend utterances in accordance with the requirements of the communicative situation. This broad view of pragmatic disability will be adopted here.