McDonald’s has launched a campaign to get the word ‘McJob’ stricken from the Oxford English Dictionary. The effort is being supported by Labour MP Clive Betts, who has even tabled an Early Day Motion on the issue. He really should know better.
Multinational corporations have many powers in this world. Thankfully, these do not include – at least, not yet – the right to dictate the meaning of words in the English language.
The prerogative should not be conceded. Otherwise the next move from the company Ray Kroc founded will be to get the term ‘McLibel’ excised from legal texts and history books.
The authority to write newspeak rests solely with the Ingsoc Party in George Orwell’s 1984. And that was a work of fiction.
Whether or not ‘McJob’ is an insult to the 67,000 McDonald’s employees in the UK is beside the point.
In the 1950s, the term ‘words that can’t be found in the dictionary’ was an established euphemism. It isn’t in 2007, because there are no such words. Rightly so.
The words ‘nigger’ and ‘cunt’ remain offensive to many, including me. But they mean what they have come to mean through the spontaneously determined processes of the free market in words. Nobody maintains they should not have a place in the OED.
So here’s a suggestion for Mr Betts. If you really want to do something to further the lot of McDonald’s workers, why don’t you instead pressurise the business to stop sacking employees who try to unionise burger flips?
Comments (16)
What does "spontaneously determined processes of the free market in words" actually mean? Given that languages are shaped by the dominant class in society it would follow that there can be no "free market in words" as the market is rigged and therefore not properly speaking free. Or to put it another way the ruling class controls the means of intellectual production and uses them to determine both the form and content of language. Although I accept that there are also counterveiling tendencies to that drive for control but even they cannot be said to be truly spontaneous.
Well, I'm not a qualified linguist Mike. But my reckoning is that when it comes to words, the means of production are mostly in the hands of the working class already. That's why rich kids try to sound like gangstas, no?
At the very least dave, your concpt of a "free market in words" is an adaptation to the idea that all human relationships should be mediated by commodity exchenge.
Surely language is part of a creative commonwealth that exists outside of those parts of life dominated by the market.
The need to roll back the market is the key ideological battleground now, to recover round from Thatcher's success of "there is no aterntaive".
So using a market metaphor for non-market human relationships is mistake. A political mistake,, unrelated to the study of linguistics.
According to the House of Commons Register of Members' Interests, Clive Betts MP received match tickets and hospitality at the 2006 World Cup in Germany from McDonalds. Coincidence, doubtless.
Well Dave I'm not a linguist either but I do try to think like a Marxist. Which efforts are very rewarding I find.
Which is why, having read a little Marxist political ecoomy, I read your comment concerning the working class owning the means of production of words I burst into tears of laugher on what has been a sad day. I thank you for that.
But more important by far I feel that we really ought to note that the working class does not possess the means of production of words. How can it when the boss class owns and controls the means of cultural production such as the media you write for and the television I've just been eyeballing.
Those means of production Dave determine which words become popular and are spread through society. The owners and controlers of the means of cultural production determine who is and who isn't given access to the media.
In this society even the words in your mouth 'belong' to another class.
Mike is correct to criticise Dave here.
IMO Dave's novel concept of the means of production of language being in the hands of the working class is a ludicrous atempt to dress up a fatuous observation in Marxist sounding goblydegook.
What n erath does this mean? "But my reckoning is that when it comes to words, the means of production are mostly in the hands of the working class already"
I don't know whether it is arrogance or naiviety from Dave when he pontificates on a question without any reference to previous discussion and debate. the question of marxism and language is hardly a black canvass, and I would recommend the works of Volosinov:
e.g
http://www.marxists.org/archive/voloshinov/1929/marxism-language.htm#c1
My thoughts, when I heard this, were exactly the same as Dave, but then I considered..
To begin with, Mike and Andy Newman are not Marxists, still less materialists, when it comes to language.
As the great specialist in this area, comrade Stalin, pointed out in *Concerning Marxism and Linguistics*(contra Volosinov-style arguments), language is not part of the superstructure. It is therefore not determineed by the 'ownership' of the idelogical apparatus. This can be seen: 1) Morpologically, 2) Syntactically and 3) Semantically.
On this non-class foundation, rooted in the nature of the human mind (Chomsky), is built the entire level of shifting *meaning* which is precisely where speech meets ideology in the sense Marxists have described and explained in class terms.
No-one with the slightest knowledge of linguistics would claim that there is some kind of class determination in the first two areas. How can you explain the difference between agglutative, isolating and synthetic languages in class terms? How can you you class the syntax of language through class categories? The attempt by Bernstein to distinguish restricted, working- class, and expanded, middle-class educated, codes is wholly discredited. If we used this comparatively we would find that it makes, say, langauges which decline nouns and have elaborate conjugations of verbs are more 'elitist' than say a wholly isolating language - so Georgian is more aristocratic than Malayan.
The semantic development of language, word meanings, is infinitely productive. Nobody has ever been able to fix it. Orwell's Newspeak simply would be unable to pin down and freeze language (and grammar) however hard the ideologues of Ingsoc tried.
As everybody has the basic linguistic 'means of production', and it's impossible to take it from them without silencing them, I would agree entirely with Dave that the working class can say what it likes.
Though I'd quite like big business to try to seize the right to define dictionary words. As with McDonald's it would make them look complete arses.
Mike wrote:
In this society even the words in your mouth 'belong' to another class
what a pile of reductionist nonsense
if that is the case, how then do you explain the advent and popularity of pig latin?
or commonly used London* expressions such as “butchers”, “dekko”, “mincies” and many, many more?
Do you suppose that the British ruling classes sit there with a list determining approved words and non-approved words? And even if they did, you suppose that most people would give a tinker’s curse eitherway?
How does all of that fit in with your ludicrous scheme of things?
Why not simply admit that it is a bit more complex than your clumsy characterisation would have us believe?
So sorry to see my chum Andrew Coates in the company of Joe Stalin. The pity of it being that like so many Andrew has failed to note that 'words' are bought and sold as commodities. It matters not a jot that working people can say what they like if nobody beyond their immediate circle ever hears what they have to say.
Which is where the ownership of the means of cultural production is vitally important in the production of 'words'. Would it have been possible for say the word gangsta, specific to the Black American urban subculture, to gain a foothold in Britain without the mediation of mass media?
Similarly would the drift in the usage of the word 'punk' have happened as did without the commodification of that now long dead youth movement? Of course not that maning was changed when the blind market forces of bourgeoisw society undermined a once rebelllious usage converting it into a bland youth life style by commodifying it. And that process was observable as early as late 1976 when punk was being born as mass movement.
I note in closiong that neither Andrew Newman or me claimed that words are determined solely by the control by the dominant class of the means of cultural production as Andrew Coates alleges. That notion would be as dull and one sided a materialism as that of Stalin lacking in any sense of dialectical interplay between conflicting class forces.
Modernity, the fact that language has an organic development as part of social interaction, and that there are regional, class and dialect variations does not mean that Mike or I are wrong (and we may not be arguing the same thing anyway)
I think your point was just so self evident that it was not worth saying.
Is this social development of language one that is via a "free market in words" though, as Dave claims?
And are the "means of produection" of language owned by the working class? Either they are as Mike argues domintaed by the boss class, or as Coatsie argues not part of the superstructure and are outside of class determination.
Both of these arguments are different from oslers, and I repeat that he was attempting to dress up an idea that was iether fatuous or just plain wrong in marxist sounding language in order to obscure the weakness of the insigt.
Nice to see you here Modernity. Don't forget I have £1,000 for you IF you can prove that I'm an ultra-left as you previously alleged. C'mon you know you want it.......
In the meantime do please desist from your gratuitous displays of bile and bad temper. Such are my specialities so do please stop making a spectacle of yourself ya mincing buffoon.
Altough I must point out that the ruling class does have lists of approved and unapproved words. I believe that these lists, otherwise known as dictionaries, have long been in use I'm surprised therefore by your ignorance of them.
Or perhaps we could look at the lists of words taught to infants when they first enter the educational system. regardless of their dialect or Mother language they are tuaght an offically approved form of the language of the state they arer resident in. Such an offical language being of vital importance for a bourgeoisie seeking to consolidate its rule over people often unware they belonged to a common nation.
Language like nations being, in Benedict Andersons words, invented. Certainly they are 'invented' out of pre-existing matrial but invented they are. Just ask older people in Israel or IIndonesia and they will be able to tell you that the languages they speak didnot exist prior to 1945.
Neither the words in your mouth or the order in which you use them are your own. We use language as a tool to communicate and like any tool it is controled by another class. but that control is contested as it too is a locus for class struggle.
Mike wrote:
Don't forget I have £1,000 for you IF you can prove that I'm an ultra-left as you previously alleged. C'mon you know you want it
well, using language which I tend to avoid in political discourse, as it often detracts:
are you fucking mad? or just off your trolley?
what type of cretin proposes a £1000 bet (as you did) with someone he doesn't even know across the Internet?
you possibly may not be an ultralefter, but I'd bet on you being middle-class nutjob and crank, or one of their fuckwit wannabes
either way, you're an argumentative waste of time
My dear modernityblog you do make me laugh. No bet was involved I do assure you. What I proposed was a challenge which you have failed to accept. Therefore I raise the offer to £10,000 IF you can prove your assertion that I'm an ultra left.
C'mon soft lad you have nothing to lose so give it a try. Alternatively you can prove that I'm middle class and I'll give you a kiss. Either way I suspect you will continue to entertain me.
By the way if you don't like arguments what the heck are you doing on this blog?
BTW Modenity
I will bung in another £1000 if you can prove I am an anti-semite, something you have clearly implied before.
These are straight forward challenges for you to put up or shut up, following your practice of seeking to categorise people's arguments using political concepts you clearly don't understand.
Me ol' mucker Mike is of course right about the way words are produced *in ideology*. But ideology is not the same as the basic production of language, which is why Marxists have traditionally described it as a 'level' of the superstructure, with, as Engels said, a relatively independent life of its own, inflected by class and a the dominant class determining the 'ruling ideas' of society.
As for invention...
Why do we have words such as 'me' which are clearly thousands of years old in origin (as any knowledge of Indo-European languages indicates)? They form the deep structure of a language and if they were ever consciously shaped (highly unlikely) it would seem that we our tongues are dominated by Neolithic ruling classes.
If some words are deliberately coined and 'sold' the overwhelming majority of new ones spring from the creative wells of the human mind. Andy Newman makes a fair point, and there are some (advertising) openly shaped terms. But I am arguing about the basis of language: it is only once formed that speech (spontaneous and manufactured) can and is wrought into the superstructure.
I am surprised that Mike, with his well-known antipathy to Althusser, seems to take a view of language that forces it into the model of Ideology and State Apparatuses.
Some good points there Andrew but the point remains that modern languages are shaped and reshaped by the more or less conscious interventions of the dominant classes. With the aim, in part, of making language a more suitable instrument for the preservation of their ideological hegemony.
How this operates in practice differs from language to language. Thus English, the most perfect of all tongues, is well nigh impossible for any single national segment of the boss class to reshape other than extremely marginally for reasons that ought to be obvious. While modern Greek on the other hand was literally the site of class conflict as to how it should be formed when standardised some decades ago.