Taalmomen

Norms are not immutable, but are determined by the relations in society. Changes in society are followed from afar and hesitant-ly. Establishing norms only makes sense when they are rooted in reality, i.e. when they are in accord with social relations.Norms for the standard language are determined by various factors, intelligibility, comprehensibility, solidarity and status being among the most important ones. Intelligibility is dependent especially on pronunciation, comprehensibility especially on linguistic form and usage. In oral communication intelligibility is the most important factor, often being a prerequisite for comprehensibility.Whenever conveying linguistic contents is the prime objective in speaking, one must make high demand upon pronunciation, linguistic form and usage, so that phonemes and concepts will not be mis-understood. In this case the room for variation from person to person is limited. Norms related to solidarity and status may allow a much greater variation from group to group and from person to person.Each form of education in a standard language or in another first language will have to consider and will have to teach the importance of the influence of social factors on language norms, as well as the right of each individual and each group to determine one's own position in the "norm space" as defined by social factors. School and society can and should pay much more attention to language as a social skill.