The articles collected in this volume offer the most various access to the discussed questions
on norm and variation. In their entirety they reflect the current discussion of the topic.
Focusing on the object languages German and English ensures a high level of topical
consistency. On the other hand the four large topic areas (emergence and change of norms and
grammatical constructions relationship of codes of norms and 'real' language usage
competition of standard and non-standard language norms and subsistent norms of minority
languages and «institutionalised second-language varieties») cover a large range of relevant
issues thereby certainly giving an impetus to new and further investigations.
