The present study offers an overview of research on the acquisition of sociopragmatic competence in a foreign language. Our starting point is the "hardware", i.e. the bilingual brain and the storage of different types of pragmatic and linguistic information in it. We then adopt a teacher's perpective by looking at how sociopragmatic aspects of the target language are integrated in language courses and language classes. We go on to consider a number of studies on the teaching, the acquisition and the use of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in the target language. A number of studies on the teaching, the acquisition and the use of sociolinguistic and pragmatic competence in the target language are then considered. Theoretical and didactical implications are presented in the final part of the study.