Cognitive linguists have suggested that different approaches to language standardisation stem from different cultural models rooted in historical traditions based on Rationalist and Romantic philosophies. While the Rationalist model sees language as a tool to improve and regulate, the Romantic model sees it as an expression of cultural identity. Links between prescriptivism and philosophy of language have been largely overlooked, and explanations of norm-enforcement need re-evaluating in the light of evolving cultural models over the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. The burgeoning of standardization practices in the eighteenth century grew out of the philosophical tenets of the Enlightenment. In the Rationalist cultural model, language and thought are separate. Language being conventional, it could be moulded to better express rational thought. In the Romantic cultural model, language is a mysterious, essential force, determined by inner biological and psychological laws. Speaking a language implies possessing a certain world view. This vision of language is thus largely anti-normative, and critical attitudes towards prescriptivism are arguably due partly to the Romantic legacy