This paper examines the use of Japanese addressee honorific in several social contexts (e.g., family dinner table and faculty meetings) and considers the relationship between social norms and variations. It attempts to reconsider the notion of discernment (Ide, 1989, 2006) in line with Bourdieu's (1977) conception of "habitus," which allows regulated variations. By presenting both the baseline use of addressee honorifics and instances in which the speakers deviate from the baseline usage, the present study illustrates that discernment not only shapes the use of honorifics at the overall baseline level but also exerts an influence on local variations by acting as a reference point. The link between the default usage of honorifics and the wide range of variations affects our views of the existing tension between collective and context-specific characteristics of politeness described by Christie (2004). This study illustrates the ways in which the collective characteristics of addressee honorifics become a reference point for local context-specific variations, and, in turn, the local workings discursively construct and reconstruct such collective characteristics. (Contains 4 footnotes.)