The introduction situates the thirteen chapters of the volume in the field of discourse–pragmatic and change. It begins by explaining the history of the field, which was created from various strands of existing research in variationist sociolinguistics and pragmatics, and is now represented by the Discourse–Pragmatic Variation and Change (DiPVaC) Research Network, a group of scholars from a wide range of disciplines including sociolinguistics, pragmatics, conversation analysis, second language acquisition, corpus linguistics, and language contact. The introduction establishes the scope of the volume by identifying three major themes, including innovations in theory and method, innovative variables in English, and language contact, and explains how these themes fit together. It introduces the terminology used throughout the volume. Finally, it presents the structure of the volume and highlights the diverse perspectives, data sources, languages of analysis, and methodological and theoretical contributions of each chapter.