 The problem with these and similar judgements (Crystal 2007 recounts their history in the case of English) is not that they are obnoxiously conservative, a tool for social exclusion. Often they don’t play this role. Some dictionaries now include red as a possible meaning of “livid”, for example, but this, too, is a normative stance and it is normativity, not conservativism in particular, that is incompatible with a scientific stance. Even liberal views on linguistic acceptability (e.g., that it is okay to end sentences with a preposition) are prescriptions. In so far as such normativity is unavoidable in the determination of the properties of English and other languages in the folk ontology, these languages have no place in science (save as a fictional object for sociological investigation—because belief in the fiction has social effects—or as a useful shorthand).