This introductory position paper aims to familiarise the reader with the pragmatics of ritual and previous research in this field. Ritual is a complex pragmatic phenomenon present in many types of interaction, and it has been subject to academic inquiries in various disciplines. We will draw on previous research to provide a working definition of ritual, which will help us to introduce the present collection of papers. We will then introduce the different, but interrelated, methodologies used in ritual research, categorising these complementary methodologies as 'top-down' and 'bottom-up' respectively. We use this categorisation to overview the contributions of the special issue from a methodological perspective. Finally, a summary of the contents of the special issue completes this introduction.