The phrase ‘text and discourse linguistics’ (TDL) is employed here as umbrella-notion for all matters that have been handled in the linguistic study of text and discourse. This paper doesn’t focus on theoretical models or analytical categories per se, but rather on significant research domains from the early, formative TDL decades on. Some of the most important research fields from the 1970s to the 1990s, cover information structure, cohesion, coherence, grounding, and discourse types and genres. The last thirty years, distinguishing between discourse analysis, text linguistics, pragmatics, semiotics, and even linguistics has become a field of inquiry in itself. But possibly more than anything else, TDL has observed an astonishing amount of empirical studies over the last decades, comprising cross-cultural studies, studies of cognitive processes, of computer-mediated discourse, and of non-verbal communication, and it has advanced major questions on the very ontology of orality and literacy. In addition to a sustained interest in the traditional fields discussed above, some (briefly surveyed) trends were especially salient at the turn of the millenium.The most essential areas of applicational work within TDL are also mentioned.