The public's concern with the fate of the standard language has been well documented in the history of the complaint tradition. The print media have for centuries featured letters to the editor on questions of language use. This study examines a corpus of 258 language-related letters to the editor published in the English-speaking print media. By applying keyword and key semantic domain analysis, characteristics of prescriptive language are identified, as well as types of arguments used in prescriptivist discourse. This study aims to provide an insight into the argumentation strategies and points of criticism related to the nonstandard varieties of the English language.