In order to teach any language of speciality, a good knowledge of its linguistic, pragmatic and functional features is required. This will be essential for programming goals and contents, as well as for ascertaining more effective didactic and methodological criteria. Hoping to make this easier for a teacher, we have developed a general description that aims to provide the most relevant linguistic and pragmatic data on language for special purposes teaching. However, these data should also be relevant to foreign language teaching, because the main goal of this project is to highlight the didactic implications and consequences of those features discussed as characteristic.