ABSTRACT
Pragmatic variation involves the study of pragmatic features of language use in action and how these features vary according to linguistic, situational, and macrosocial factors (e.g., region, gender, age, socioeconomic status) across languages and across varieties of a language. This chapter focuses on regional pragmatic variation, a subfield of variational pragmatics that focuses on intralingual variation. First, I define key concepts of pragmatic meaning and pragmatic variation. Second, I review two predominant frameworks, both for the analysis of linguistic variation (variationist sociolinguistics) and pragmatic variation (variational pragmatics). After a review of levels of pragmatic analysis, I provide an integrated approach that can be applied to examine synchronic intralingual variation (i.e., variation within a single language or across varieties of a language) and interlingual variation (i.e., variation across languages or cross-linguistic variation). Then, I offer a selective review of the literature from 2009–2019 to highlight some of the main topics analyzed in pragmatic variation research in Spanish. I end this chapter with methodological considerations and future directions for the analysis of pragmatic variation across varieties of Spanish.
