J. César Félix-Brasdefer is Professor of Linguistics and Spanish at Indiana University, USA.María Elena Placencia is Reader in Spanish Linguistics at Birkbeck, University of London, UK.

• Introduction Part I: Pragmatic variation according to macrosocial factorsRegional affiliation1. Regional pragmatic variation in small shops in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville, Spain2. Corner-store interactions in Cartagena and Bucaramanga: A variational pragmatics study3. ‘No, gracias amigo’: Refusals of bargaining offers in e-service encounters in Mercado Libre Ecuador and Mercado Libre VenezuelaGender4. Gender variation in address form selection in corner-store interactions in a Nicaraguan community5. Gender variation in the perception of appropriate behavior in hotel service encounters in Spain6. The role of gender in Mexican e-service encounters7. Forms of address and gender in Costa Rican service encountersAge8. Pragmatic variation by age in women’s use of post-refusal small talk during service encounters in Rosario, Uruguay 9. Verbal humor and age in cafes and bars in Seville, Spain Socioeconomic status 10. Socioeconomic variation and conflict in Spanish retailer-consumer interactions on Facebook Part II: Pragmatic variation according to microsocial and situational factors 11. Interpersonal work in service encounters in Mercado Libre Argentina: A comparison between buyer and vendor patterns across two market domains12. The effects of social distance in service encounters in Puerto Rican panaderíasPart III: Theoretical and methodological issues 13. Re-thinking pragmatic variation: The case of service encounters from a modified variational pragmatics perspective14. Pragmatic variation in service encounter complaints: Some methodological issues