How does metaethics differ from normative ethics?

In the study of ethics, metaethics and normative ethics serve distinct analytical purposes.

Normative ethics is the branch of moral philosophy concerned with establishing the criteria for what is morally right and wrong. It focuses on the content of moral rules and the formulation of standards that dictate how humans should act and live. Central to this field are deontological theories, which emphasize inherent duties and obligations, and teleological (or consequentialist) theories, which evaluate actions based on the value of their outcomes.1

Metaethics, by contrast, is concerned with the nature of ethical theories and moral judgments themselves rather than their specific content. It examines the status of moral language, asking whether moral claims are cognitive—meaning they can be known to be true or false—or if they are expressions of emotion or prescriptions for action. While normative ethics seeks to define what is good or right, metaethics investigates the underlying logic, meaning, and justification of the moral concepts used in those definitions.21