Hélène Favreau’s contribution to the section tackles linguistic norms and standards from a social perspective. She poses the question of the likelihood and extent of social exclusion if norms and standards are not shared by both teacher and learner. She discusses attitudes towards given norms in France and illustrates the consequences for institutional education. Favreau’s particular interest is the identity-constructing function of different sociolinguistic norms and the deviance between standard and non-standard forms. She outlines how norms can act as a tool of exclusion rather than communication and how this might result in a profound social depreciation on the part of some speakers.