Description

This article is from the sci.lang FAQ, by Michael Covington (mcovingt@ai.uga.edu) and Mark Rosenfelder (markrose@zompist.com) with numerous contributions by others.

3. Does linguistics tell people how to speak or write properly?

No. Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive.
Linguistics can often supply facts which help people arrive at a
recommendation or value judgement, but the recommendation or value
judgement is not part of linguistic science itself.

 

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languages, scientific or historical study, human languages