Most children acquire language effortlessly during the early neurodevelopmental period. Analogously, language competence remains substantially stable throughout life in most individuals. However, language acquisition is anything but effortless for a significant number of kids, and an equally considerable number of individuals experience language disturbances in adulthood from traumatic injuries, vascular accidents, or neurodegenerative diseases. These burdensome conditions represent a fruitful and largely unexplored domain for the language sciences and, particularly, for a novel ‘dual-facing’ discipline called ‘clinical linguistics’ (henceforth, CL). As formerly suggested by Cummings (2013), despite CL being commonly overlooked in the university syllabi, this branch of linguistic studies has the potential to provide groundbreaking advances at the theoretical and applied levels. In this regard, Jakobson (1968: 13) states, ‘[F]or the linguist, who is concerned with the fully developed structure of language, its acquisition and dissolution cannot fail to provide much that is instructive.’ In what follows, we will highlight the precise meaning of this term, the goals and the methodology of this relatively novel discipline and its theoretical implications and healthcare applications.