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.

Alexandra N. Lenz is professor at the University of Vienna. Her research focus is on variationist linguistics, syntax, semantics, grammaticalization and language history. Albrecht Plewnia works as researcher at the Institut für Deutsche Sprache in Mannheim. His research focuses on German grammar, minority languages, multilingualism and language attitude.