Opening de Gruyters' 9-volume-series "Handbooks of Pragmatics", this handbook presents a comprehensive survey of the foundations of pragmatics. It covers the central theories and approaches as well as key concepts and topics, typical of mainstream pragmatics, i.e. the traditional and most widespread approach to the ways and means of using language in authentic social contexts. The five main sections of the handbook are dedicated to the Conceptual and Theoretical Foundations (with a historiographic overview of the establishment and subsequent development of pragmatics), Key Topics (exploring indexicality, reference and other concepts that were the first to make their way from grammar into pragmatics and mainstream notions like speech acts, types of inference), the Place of Pragmatics in the Description of Discourse (delimiting pragmatics from grammar, semantics, prosody, literary criticism), and Methods and Tools.