The author sets out to clarify how universals relate to norms. She argues, basing her case on sociology and theoretical linguistics, that norms are sociocultural whereas universals are cognitive. In considering those processes that are usually given as examples of universal tendencies, she argues that only one is a candidate for the status of “universal” according to her interpretation, namely the under-representation of linguistic features that are characteristically found in the target language. In conclusion, the author argues that corpus studies are better suited to the search for evidence of norms rather than universals.