La norme linguistique dans le dictionnaire de l’académie française

Abstract

Since 1694, it is in the Dictionnaire de l’Academie francaise that you can find normative instructions about « le bon usage » of the French language. A first glance on the word list of the entries bears witness of the desire to exclude from it certain categories of words : rare or obsolete vocabulary, words of regional usage and also technical terms - the latter having been published in another dictionary, by Thomas Corneille, as a complement to the Dictionnaire de l’Academie. We can also notice that Grammatical remarks are few, whereas some precise comments can be found here and there about most favourite pronunciations.