The Académie Française is a French language King Canute. It is an official authority on the French language, publishes an official dictionary, the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française; Wikipedia says its rulings are not binding on the public but it has attempted to stem the tide of English or Americanisms befouling la belle langue.
So much for l’Académie. Now, McDonald’s is lobbying the Oxford English Dictionary to remove the term McJob.
It’s as though McDonald’s, having given up attempts to understand what makes a decent burger, is now trying to ignore what makes a dictionary.
The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t invent English it catalogues and describes the language. For McDonald’s to suppose the OED acts in a similar fashion to the Académie Française is an odd position for a US-company to adopt.
On this side of La Manche, we have Labour MP Clive Betts regretting the use of derogtory phrases such as McJob to describe low-paid service-sector employment. Clive Betts seems excessivley busy-bodyish. According to TheyWorkForYou.com he is:
- Strongly for introducing a smoking ban.
- Very strongly for introducing ID cards.
- Very strongly for the fox hunting ban
- although his sort of record is not too unusual for the sherpas of New Labour.
