Some languages have a "regulatory body" issuing recommendations and guidelines regarding the use of that language.
For example in the case of Spanish it's the Real Academia Española whose status is recognised in all Spanish-speaking countries. The Academy, among other things, publishes a dictionary ("DRAE"), in print and online, which is usually given a lot of prestige (but is not without controversies, of course).
Are there any such authorative—or at least influential—institution(s) or publication(s) for the English language?
Best Answer
Fortunately or unfortunately, no. There is no regulatory body like the Real Academia Española (or the Académie française, or the many others) deciding what is correct English; English evolves naturally with the changing usage of people. Right and wrong are decided based on describing and analyzing actual usage. (This — "descriptive linguistics" — is so canonical among English linguists that I've seen some of them occasionally find other languages' regulatory bodies an absurd idea. Anyway…)
Among dictionaries, the Oxford English dictionary and the Merriam-Webster dictionary are a couple of the "good" dictionaries (there are others), but note that these, too, have as their goal being reliable indicators of actual usage, and not regulation of, or authority over, language.