Introduction

The present volume focuses on service encounters in the Spanish-speaking world. Their pervasiveness in everyday life, both on- and off-liine makes them fertile ground for analysis from both a pragmatic and a sociolinguistic perspective. This volume aims to expand the study of service encounter interactions into new varieties of Spanish, using innovative methodological frameworks that examine pragmatic variation and new face- to- face and digital contexts. The different empirical chapters highlight pragmatic variation at the national and subnational levels, conditioned by macro- (region, gender, age, socioeconomic status) and/ or microsocial and situational factors. Finally, the present volume makes methodological contributions to the study of SEs through both the empirical works that adopt different perspectives and the theoretical and methodological chapters at the end of the volume