This volume intervenes in the perennial discussion of tense with an attempt to broaden its scope by taking a searching look at the situation in connection with spoken German. As the differences between written and spoken language cannot be generalized upon, analysis concentrates on two specific text varieties from each medium (live football commentary and talk-show versus letter and review). Following a discussion on the theoretical bearings of the approach used, broad-ranging corpus analyses are used to identify the differences displayed by the text varieties in question with regard to the use of tense and other linguistic devices expressing temporality.