My request for information and images of how bookshops in other cities than the ones I frequent promote prescriptivism, and in particular usage guides, has met with a response! Thank you, Matjaž Zgonc, for your pictures of the linguistics section from Slovenia’s major bookstore knjigarna konzorcij, in Ljubljana. Matjaž is a regular contributor to this blog, and I’m really grateful for his input to my new LLinB project. I hope it will set an example!

So here are his pictures and a brief description of what he found:

‘The section is divided into subsections corresponding to languages as well as a “linguistics” section, which is actually linguistics of Slovenian. The other section titled “learning of Slovenian” učenje slovenščine contains materials for L2 learning. In fact, all the sections, including the one for English, contain exclusively learning materials for L2 (or LX) learners, mostly coursebooks and exercise books that would, or indeed are, used in the state education system. The “linguistics” section contains materials for “improving” Slovenian as L1, namely exercise books containing orthography and grammar exercises. All of them are retellings of the official, state (academia) licensed normative texts. Some of them are pedagogical and some andragogical. There are also two scientific treatises available. In any case, no usage guide in sight. 

I labeled the photos of interest for the project with languages that the exercise books there contain. I must stress that this is not only a major bookstore, it is also typical in that most other smaller bookstores will contain a very similar repertoire of books on linguistics, only smaller. 

To me, this seems to be one of the more striking differences between presctiptivism landscapes in Slovenia and the UK, for example – namely that private prescriptive enterprise does not engage in producing unique works where the author’s or some other version of Slovenian would be promoted – it is rather the licenced, sponsored version of the standard that is contained in those works, together with loads of exercises.’