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Quatrarius · 1780 days ago · link · · parent · post: The Academic Apocalypse: The crisis of English departments is also a crisis of faith.
it's a language study jargon thing (although i've heard it in philosophy abt morals?): prescriptivists are the ones that prescribe rules for language ("never split infinitives!") and descriptivists are the ones that describe the way people actually speak ("in english, adverbs are often placed between verbs and the infinitive particle to"). i'm bringing it into the wider world because i think it captures the distinction between Humanities the institution and humanities the study of society/culture - the Humanities try to tell you what's good or bad and the humanities tell you the things that are out there and what purpose they have i'll define my keyterms a bit better next time