This just takes the Mckey

It ain’t cool to be overly fastidious about language. Deliberate attempts by a single institution or organisation to manipulate or manage the language others use often end in failure. One would really need to live in Blair’s world for such endeavours to be successful (that is Eric Arthur Blair, of course). Nevertheless, some keep trying.

Last week it emerged that McDonalds will be launching a campaign to urge the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to alter its definition of the slang word, ‘McJob’. The term, popularised by Douglas Coupland’s Generation X at the beginning of the 1990s, signifies a low-pay dead-end job. The fast-food chain argues that this pejorative definition, first entered into the OED in 2001, no longer fits the contemporary reality of employment in the hamburger restaurant.

Many corporations are defensive about their image, and McDonalds are rightly known for being particularly litigious, but what is striking in this case is not Mickey-D’s zeal for pettily defending its trademark, but rather its ‘compassionate’ justification for a change in the definition: "We believe that it is out of date, out of touch with reality and, most importantly, it is insulting to those talented, committed, hard-working people who serve the public every day" (my italics).

There is an agonising falseness about this ‘concern’ for their employees’ ‘feelings’. But without getting into a huff about workers’ pay and conditions, we should ask why McDonalds are pursuing this PR defence of their employees’ dignity. Surely it will expose them to charges of hypocrisy? Actually, Ronald McDonald is cleverer than that – the clown with the red afro reckons that the argument about employees’ feelings will hold purchase with the public. And he’s probably right.

As has been widely noted elsewhere, the perception of language as being a means of rational communication is changing to that of being an act in itself. This new status is unwarranted, especially in the case of political speech which truly is a means to an end, not an end in itself (contra poetry, for example). This explains why debates over what words we use have become legitimate political battlegrounds, in some cases even taking precedence over what is happening in the world ‘out there’ (see this article on the banning of the 'N-word' in New York). In such a context, we can surely understand why some people might be swayed by McDonalds’ appeals to sign their petition. One might even conceive of ‘progressives’ arguing for a change to the current (denigratory) definition of a ‘McJob’ on the grounds of ‘showing solidarity’ with burger-flippers the world over.

A correlative recent case is that of Professor David Coleman where students at Oxford University seemed more intent on preventing him from airing his anti-immigration views than on actually campaigning for open borders. Such stories point to a strange new political shadow-puppetry going on. Where nowadays few are prepared to take action against real injustices, it is increasingly legitimate – and desirable – to intervene on behalf of the ‘vulnerable’ to protect them from exactly what matters least – words.

The consequences are two-fold. Firstly, this fixation on language obviates the need for real political action by appearing to ‘deal with the problem’. In the McDonalds case, a McJob is magically transformed into meaningful, well-remunerated employment; or rather, the difficulties faced by minimum-wage service sector workers are resolved through them no longer having to face the ignominy of having one’s job referred to as ‘unstimulating’. Secondly, the blurring of the line between speech and action – whereby causing offence is an actual harm – gives undue importance to the emotional impact of words, instead of to their capacity to rationally inspire action.

The logic of those self-described progressives who earnestly seek to protect the vulnerable from harmful words, and of those such as McDonalds who in Orwellian style try to convince you black is white, is the same: don't change the world, just change perceptions. And the consequence is the same too: our capacity to initiate political action through rational argument is severely diminished.

Alex Hochuli