Broadly defined, corpus pragmatics, as part of empirical and data-based pragmatics, refers to studies of language use that employ large, computer-readable language corpora (compiled by corpus linguists). Some technical and philosophical developments over the last decade, gradually allowed to consider the coupling of discourse and Corpus Linguistics. The problems of corpus compilation and annotation are briefly outlined. Some early corpus pragmatic work handling form-to-function research questions and some recent advances in corpus-based searches for pragmatic functions (i.e. function-to-form research questions) are reviewed. In the latter, three distinct solution types can be discerned in corpus-based speech act retrievals: the search for illocutionary force indicating devices (IFIDs), for typical patterns, and for communicative expressions. Corpus pragmatic research is never a case of automatic processing; it always requires researcher skills.