Two papers address different issues in linguistic theory. "Attitudes, Norms and Standardization in English: Some Aspects of the Language In Its Social Context," by Bent Preisler, looks at how attitudes affect language norms and ultimately, standardization in British and U.S. English. It begins with the attitudes and communicative patterns of children and adolescents and the development of male/female speech patterns later in life. After relating this to the process of standardization in society at large, some problems in these specific social contexts are discussed. Implications for the teaching of English as a Second Language are also examined. "Metapragmatics and Chauncey Gardener: Toward and Ecology of Communication," by Claudia Caffi, discusses the role of metapragmatics in the study of human interaction. First, three perspectives on metapragmatics are presented, and then the application of metapragmatic perspective in analysis of empirical data is illustrated in dialogues from the film "Being There." It is argued that metapragmatics allows examination of the unintended meaning assigned to utterances by the character Chance and enables us to make the conditions of interaction explicit. (MSE)