The article addresses the aims of the legal recognition of a language as the national ("state") language, the legal regulations concerning observance of the standards of the contemporary Russian ("literary") language as national ("state") language of the Russian Federation, as well as the problems of implementation of these regulations in the oral public speech. The authors emphasize the role of dictionaries and grammar books approved by the Ministry of Education and Science to provide the implementation of the language legislation and the official codification of the norms of the contemporary Russian standard ("literary") language as the national ("state") language of the Russian Federation. The article puts forward a number of suggestions for improving the current legal mechanism of codification of language norms for the oral speech with regard to the use of language as a national ("state") language. Refs 5.