Preface to the handbook series -- 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.