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Abstract This overview examines the theoretical evolution and contemporary reconceptualization of Critical Applied Linguistics (CAL), tracing its development from an initial critique of modernist paradigms to its current status as a comprehensive framework for examining language in relation to power, inequality, and social transformation. Drawing on foundational scholarship and contemporary theoretical developments—including Frankfurt School Critical Theory, poststructuralism, and decolonial thought—we demonstrate how CAL has transcended its original positioning to engage with the multilingual, translingual, spatial, sensory, and performative “turns” in applied linguistics. The twenty‐three entries that compose this section delineate and illustrate CAL's theoretical foundations, methodological innovations, and sustained commitment to examining how power is realized and distributed through linguistic practices across diverse domains.