Frontmatter -- Preface to the handbook series Table of contents Introducing the pragmatics of society I. Social, regional and situational factors -- 1. Doing age and ageing: language, discourse and social interaction 2. Gender identities and discourse 3. Regional pragmatic variation 4. Pragmatics in multilingual language situations II. The language system and pragmalinguistic features -- 5. Speech and writing: linguistic styles enabled by the technology of literacy 6. Phonetics and the management of talk-in-interaction 7. Prosody and pragmatic effects III. Pragmatic markers and the notion of speaker attitude -- 8. Pragmatic markers in a sociopragmatic perspective 9. Interjections 10. Vagueness and hedging IV. Different interpretational levels - speech acts, politeness and beyond -- 11. Requests and orders: a cross-linguistic study of their linguistic construction and interactional organization 12. Appreciatory sounds and expressions of embodied pleasure used as compliments 13. Politeness and impoliteness 14. Honorifics and address terms V. Sequential patterns and activities -- 15. Social and pragmatic variation in the sequential organization of talk 16. Turn-taking in conversation 17. Pauses and hesitations VI. Pragmatics and the notion of culture -- 18. Cultural variation in language use 19. Intercultural rhetoric and language of healthcare VII. Pragmatics and the larger societal context -- 20. Global and intercultural communication 21. Critical Discourse Analysis: Overview, challenges, and perspectives 22. Pragmatics, linguistic anthropology and history About the authors Author index Subject index