In our everyday life, communicative processes are relevant in almost all situations. It is important to know when you must say something which is adequate in the situation or when it is better to say nothing. Communicative competence is fundamental for a successful life in our society as it is of great importance for all areas of life. Therefore, it is not surprising that communicative competence is the subject of many theoretical and empirical approaches and, in consequence, research on this topic is diverse. The contributions to this handbook focuson linguistic aspects of communication. In the centre of interest are linguistic oriented performances of different forms of communicative competence, language acquisition and language disorders.