The brain-trust at McDonald’s apparently don’t understand the purpose of a dictionary. I’d tell them to go look it up, but the resulting recursive loop might destroy the universe.
Fast-food giant McDonald’s has launched a petition to get the dictionary definition of a McJob changed.
The Oxford English Dictionary currently describes a McJob as “an unstimulating low-paid job with few prospects”.
McDonald’s says this definition is now “out of date and insulting”, and claims a survey found that 69% of the UK population agree it needs updating.
Dictionaries don’t define the meaning of a word, they try, so far as they can, to reflect the meaning(s) of a word. It is entirely possible that a job at McDonald’s is hugely rewarding, and I’m a fool not to chuck what I’m doing now and rush to my nearest McD’s. That doesn’t have anything at all to do with what ‘McJob’ means. Words mean what societies choose for them to mean. Those meanings can change over time (gay, clue, quaint), or be entirely invented (quiz, blog, bogoflops), but there’s only one way of voting for the meaning of a word, and a petition ain’t it.
4 Comments
I sort of see your point, but isn’t “reflect” just another way of saying, “usage”? And if the word’s in the dictionary with its various “usages” isn’t that the same thing as defining the word? The other thing I would add is that the ability to name something is a significant means of gaining power over others (Adam got to name all the animals, LOL) and McDonald’s sees “definitive” recognition of the word as harmful to its interests.
Publishing something in a dictionary inevitably does affect the meaning and interpretation of language. But dictionaries don’t make things up – if the OED claimed that Dyjo was a type of performance art involving vacuum cleaners that wouldn’t make it so. The OED in particular is meticulous in its citation of sources.
If the word really has fallen out of use then I’ve no doubt the OED will list the usage or indeed the entire word as archaic. But there’s a long list of words that are insulting and perhaps even factually inaccurate, but banning the words doesn’t change their use.
I’m not claiming the OED makes up words; I’m saying that by recognizing the word they (OED) are in fact, defining it – fixing its meaning – which is the basis for McD’s complaint. Informal usage is heedless to authority, but “naming” something in the OED (“the authority”), that’s power. Now, about this DyJo thing…
I think you put too much weight on the ‘authority’ of dictionaries. The meaning of ‘gay’ was pretty well fixed, until it got changed, and there are hundreds of examples of words that have had multiple meanings over the centuries.
Incidentally, I’m not convinced that McDonald’s have this right even on the merits – the definition is ‘Unstimulating (check), low-paid (check) job with few prospects (check)”. These jobs are undoubtedly important to an economy, and I’m glad they exist, but the vast majority of people don’t derive great satisfaction from flipping burgers, don’t get paid much for it, and don’t progress into management.