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This article concerns the Linguistic Imagination ('Imaginaire linguistique') model developed in the 1980s by Anne-Marie Houdebine. It aims to show how this model, designed to increase understanding of the role played by speakers' language attitudes in the assessment of their usage and that of others, can be used to analyze the way discourse on language norms can be constructed. We show how we have used the model to analyze a particular type of normative discourse: ‘language' rubrics, in the form of series of articles devoted to language and published in the press. We show how the Houdebine model allowed us to establish an analytical framework within which we were able to collect and study the various arguments that the columnists use to assess the acceptability of language traits they comment on. We further propose a critical reflection on the model in the light of our analysis, with the particular aim of enriching it. Our analysis concerns a corpus made up of 31 language-rubric articles published in the Quebec press between 1865 and 1996.