So, McDonald's is, again, trying to get McJob out of "the dictionary." This time they're going after the OED; last time they were gunning for Merriam-Webster. (Why no mention of M-W this time? Did they think, "Well, Springfield's a tough bunch, but the OED should roll over like a litter of puppies"?)

Here's a link about the story from BoingBoing, and here's a link from the OUP blog (which also includes a link to me talking about it on Chicago Public Radio).

I'm sure I don't need to explain to y'all that 1) lexicographers do not bow to corporate pressure (we also don't negotiate with terrorists), and 2) the way to get a word "out of the dictionary" is to convince all the people who are using the word in a way you don't like to stop. Obviously, since #2 is patently impossible, at least on the usual PR person's timescale, persons with a word to grind often resort to leaning on lexicographers.

I just don't understand this. It didn't work in 2003; it's not going to work now. Also, McJob is not really a very frequent term; by doing all these press shenanigans McDonald's is probably vastly increasing the number of people who will hear about it and who might now be tempted to use it in the sense that McDonald's deplores ("a low-paid job with few prospects").

What if, instead of spending money on this ill-conceived campaign, they added another grant to their employee scholarship program and publicized that? Or maybe increased their employee surveys, to find out what their employees really think of their jobs, and publicized that result (if it turned out positively, of course, and I have no reason to think it wouldn't). A press release that started "McJob? No, McSuccess!" or something similarly hokey, trumpeting the general satisfaction, opportunity for advancement, etc. of entry-level workers, especially women, minorities, and the disabled, would probably get just as much play in the press as this misguided attempt to police the usage of McJob.

I did a quick check of the Oxford English Corpus, and found that the most common "Mc" word in the corpus (after discarding all the "Mc" surnames like mine and the name McDonald's itself) was McNugget/s (counting plural and singular together), followed by McWorld, McMansion/s, McJob/s, and then McFlurry. (I was slightly disappointed to learn that McFondle is a surname, as are McLearn and McComas. Once you start seeing "Mc" as a disparaging prefix, everything looks slightly off.)

I'm sure this McStory will disappear faster than a sleeve of those hot, delicious fries. But what a waste of everyone's time until then!

Labels: trademarks

This entry was posted by Erin, on Wednesday, March 21, 2007. You can leave your response.