In the volume’s afterword, the founder of the Discourse–Pragmatic Variation and Change Research network assesses how the field has expanded over recent decades, and offers suggestions for its future development. The afterword discusses the strengths of this volume, including the breadth and diversity of topics covered. It calls for further studies of discourse–pragmatic variation in contact settings, for cross–linguistic comparisons, and for studying languages other than English, arguing that such analyses will facilitate exploration of how discourse–pragmatic variation and change manifests across languages. It also recommends an expansion of data sources, methodological approaches and theoretical frameworks, arguing that such expansion will diversify the kind of research questions discourse variationists can be pursue.