This article considers the status of norms in sociolinguistic description, more precisely
variationist research. The discussion in this paper is structured around Labov’s
definition of speech community. The definition not only aroused intense discussion
within the paradigm on the nature of norms but also steered the subsequent research
theoretically and methodologically. By briefly reviewing the theoretical debate
concerning norms and studying some of the central concepts in empirical
sociolinguistics, this article examines what kind of picture the theoretical and
methodological background of the variationist paradigm depicts on language norms.