diff --git a/lib/linguist/language.rb b/lib/linguist/language.rb
index 1cdf8c7b..04562dc2 100644
--- a/lib/linguist/language.rb
+++ b/lib/linguist/language.rb
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ module Linguist
     @primary_extension_index  = {}
 
     # Valid Languages types
-    TYPES = [:data, :markup, :programming]
+    TYPES = [:data, :markup, :programming, :prose]
 
     # Names of non-programming languages that we will still detect
     #
@@ -35,6 +35,15 @@ module Linguist
       ["CSS", "Less", "Sass", "TeX"]
     end
 
+    # Detect languages by a specific type
+    #
+    # type - A symbol that exists within TYPES
+    #
+    # Returns an array
+    def self.by_type(type)
+      all.select { |h| h.type == type }
+    end
+
     # Internal: Create a new Language object
     #
     # attributes - A hash of attributes
diff --git a/test/test_language.rb b/test/test_language.rb
index c4830691..e93cbd5d 100644
--- a/test/test_language.rb
+++ b/test/test_language.rb
@@ -368,6 +368,9 @@ class TestLanguage < Test::Unit::TestCase
     assert !Language['Ruby'].eql?(Language['Python'])
   end
 
+  def test_by_type
+    assert_equal 6, Language.by_type(:prose).length
+  end
 
   def test_colorize
     assert_equal <<-HTML.chomp, Language['Ruby'].colorize("def foo\n  'foo'\nend\n")