Acknowledgements -- Contributors -- Introduction-- Section I: Pragmatic variation according to macrosocial factors: 1. Regional pragmatic variation in small shops in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, and Seville, Spain / J. César Félix-Brasdefer & Allison B. Yates -- 2. Corner-store interactions in Cartagena and Bucaramanga: A variational pragmatics study / Rebeca Bataller -- 3. 'No, gracias amigo': Refusals of bargaining offers in e-service encounters in Mercado Libre Ecuador and Mercado Libre Venezuela / María Elena Placencia & Carmen García -- 4. Gender variation in address form selection in corner store interactions in a Nicaraguan community / Jeff Michno -- 5. Gender variation in the perception of appropriate behavior in hotel service encounters in Spain / Lucía Fernández-Amaya & María de la O Hernández-López -- 6. The role of gender in Mexican e-service encounters / Laura M. Merino Hernández -- 7. Forms of address and gender in Costa Rican service encounters / Jorge Murillo Medrano -- 8. Pragmatic variation by age in women's use of post-refusal small talk during service encounters in Rosario, Uruguay / Heather R. Kaiser -- 9. Verbal humor and age in cafes and bars in Seville, Spain / Manuel Padilla Cruz -- 10. Socioeconomic variation and conflict in Spanish retailer-consumer interactions on Facebook / Patricia Bou-Franch & Pilar Garcés-Conejos Blitvich -- Section II: Pragmatic variation according to microsocial and situational factors: 11. Interpersonal work in service encounters on Mercado Libre Argentina: A comparison between buyer and vendor patterns across two market domains / Hebe Powell & María Elena Placencia -- 12. The effects of social distance in service encounters in Puerto Rican panaderías / Juan M. Escalona Torres -- Section III: Theoretical and methodological issues: 13. Re-thinking pragmatic variation: The case of service encounters from a modified variational pragmatics perspective / Klaus P. Schneider -- 14. Pragmatic variation in service encounter complaints: Some methodological issues / Ronald Geluykens.