McWords

Question

This piglix contains articles or sub-piglix about McWords

Answer 1

McWords

A McWord is a word containing the prefix Mc-, derived from the first syllable of the name of the McDonald's restaurant chain. Words of this nature are either official marketing terms of the chain (such as McNugget), or are neologisms designed to evoke pejorative associations with the restaurant chain or fast food in general, often for qualities of cheapness, inauthenticity, or the rapidity and ease of manufacture. They are also used in non-consumerism contexts as a pejorative for heavily commercialized or globalized things and concepts.

McWords include:

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Answer 2

McChurch

McChurch is a McWord used to suggest that a particular church has a strong element of entertainment, consumerism or commercialism which obscures its religious aspects. The term is sometimes used as a derogatory synonym for megachurch.

The precise origins of the term McChurch are unclear, dating back to at least the early 1990s. Prominent media sources using the term include:

While precise definitions of a McChurch also differ, McClory attempted to list the following common elements, which he found at Willow Creek and other similar churches:

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Answer 3

McDonaldization

McDonaldization is a term used by sociologist George Ritzer in his book The McDonaldization of Society (1993). He explains that it becomes manifested when a society adopts the characteristics of a fast-food restaurant. McDonaldization is a reconceptualization of rationalization and scientific management. Where Max Weber used the model of the bureaucracy to represent the direction of this changing society, Ritzer sees the fast-food restaurant as having become a more representative contemporary paradigm (Ritzer, 2004:553). The process of McDonaldization can be summarized as the way in which "the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as of the rest of the world."

McDonaldization thesis in cultural version is a comparatively recent idea of the worldwide of cultures. In contemporary society, the concept of McDonaldization is gaining attention in different aspects such as culture, as most countries have adapted to this concept because of globalization.

Ritzer highlighted four primary components of McDonaldization:

With these four principles of the fast food industry, a strategy which is rational within a narrow scope can lead to outcomes that are harmful or irrational. As these processes spread to other parts of society, modern society’s new social and cultural characteristics are created. For example, as McDonald’s enters a country and consumer patterns are unified, cultural hybridization occurs.

Ritzer also outlines Irrationality of Rationality as a fifth aspect of McDonaldization. "Most specifically, irrationality means that rational systems are unreasonable systems. By that I mean that they deny the basic humanity, the human reason, of the people who work within or are served by them." (Ritzer 1994:154)

Ritzer introduces this during Chapter Two (The Past, Present, and Future of McDonaldization: From the Iron Cage to the Fast-Food Factory and Beyond) of his book "The McDonaldization of Society" in the sub-section Irrationality and the "Iron Cage." He states that "Despite the advantages it offers, bureaucracy suffers from the irrationality of rationality. Like a fast-food restaurant, a bureaucracy can be a dehumanizing place in which to work and by which to be served." In short; "settings in which people cannot always behave as human beings".

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Answer 4

McJob

McJob is slang for a low-paying, low-prestige dead-end job that requires few skills and offers very little chance of intracompany advancement. The term McJob comes from the name of the fast-food restaurant McDonald's, but is used to describe any low-status job – regardless of the employer – where little training is required, staff turnover is high, and workers' activities are tightly regulated by managers.

"McJob" was in use at least as early as 1986, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which defines it as "An unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects, esp. one created by the expansion of the service sector." Lack of job security is common.

The term was coined by sociologist Amitai Etzioni, and appeared in the Washington Post on August 24, 1986 in the article "McJobs are Bad for Kids". The term was popularized by Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, described therein as "a low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one."

The term appears in the 1994 novel Interface (by Neal Stephenson and George Jewsbury) to describe in the abstract positions that are briefly held and underpaid. In the 1999 British film Human Traffic, one character's work in a generic burger outlet is referred to as a McJob.

In the face of objections from McDonald's, the term "McJob" was added to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary in 2003,. In an open letter to Merriam-Webster, McDonald's CEO, James Cantalupo denounced the definition as a "slap in the face" to all restaurant employees, and stated that "a more appropriate definition of a 'McJob' might be 'teaches responsibility'". Merriam-Webster responded that "[they stood] by the accuracy and appropriateness of [their] definition."

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Answer 5

McLibel

McDonald's Corporation v Steel & Morris [1997] EWHC QB 366, known as "the McLibel case", was an English lawsuit for libel filed by McDonald's Corporation against environmental activists Helen Steel and David Morris (often referred to as "The McLibel Two") over a factsheet critical of the company. Each of two hearings in English courts found some of the leaflet's contested claims to be libellous and others to be true. The partial nature of the victory, the David-and-Goliath nature of the case, and the drawn-out litigation embarrassed McDonald's. One of the authors of the "McLibel leaflet" was an undercover police officer who had infiltrated London Greenpeace.

The original case lasted nearly ten years which, according to the BBC, made it the longest-running case in English history. McDonald's announced that it did not plan to collect the £40,000 that it was awarded by the courts. Following the decision, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in Steel & Morris v United Kingdom that the pair had been denied a fair trial, in breach of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to a fair trial) and that their conduct should have been protected by Article 10 of the Convention, which protects the right to freedom of expression. The court awarded a judgement of £57,000 against the UK government. McDonald's itself was not involved in, or a party to, this action, as applications to the ECHR are independent cases filed against the relevant state. This judgement, given on 15 February 2005, represented the end of the pair's 20-year battle with McDonald's. Franny Armstrong and Ken Loach made a documentary film, McLibel, about the case.

London Greenpeace was a small environmental campaigning group that existed between 1972 and 2001. They were not affiliated with the larger Greenpeace International organisation, which they declined to join as they saw it being too "centralised and mainstream for their tastes".

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Answer 6

McMansion

In suburban communities, McMansion is a pejorative term for a large "mass-produced" dwelling, constructed with low-quality materials and craftsmanship, using a mishmash of architectural symbols to invoke connotations of wealth or taste, executed via poorly thought-out exterior and interior design.

An example of a McWord, "McMansion" associates the generic quality of these luxury homes with that of mass-produced fast food by evoking the McDonald's restaurant chain.

The neologism "McMansion" seems to have been coined sometime in the early 1980s. It appeared in the Los Angeles Times in 1990 and the New York Times in 1998. Related terms include "Persian palace", "garage Mahal", "starter castle", and "Hummer house". Marketing parlance often uses the term "tract mansions" or executive homes.

The term "McMansion" is generally used to denote a new, or recent, multi-story house of no clear architectural style, which prizes superficial appearance, and sheer size, over quality.

McMansion may refer to oversized and cheaply built homes developed at once in a subdivision, or refer to a dwelling that replaces a smaller house, in a neighborhood of smaller houses, which seems far too large for its lot. (Such a McMansion may lack side windows due to the proximity to the boundaries - another McMansion-related cliché.)

One real-estate writer explains the successful formula for McMansions: symmetrical structures on clear-cut lots with Palladian windows centered over the main entry and brick or stone enhancing the driveway entrance, plus multiple chimneys, dormers, pilasters, and columns—and inside, the master suite with dressing rooms and bath-spa, great rooms, breakfast and dining rooms, showplace kitchen, and extra high and wide garages for multiple cars and SUVs.

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Answer 7

McOndo

McOndo is a Latin American literary movement that breaks from the Magical Realism (Realismo mágico) mode of narration, and counters it with the strong, ideologic associations of the cultural and narrative languages of the mass communications media, and with the modernity of urban living; the experience of town versus country, of McOndo vs. Macondo. The literature of McOndo presents urban Latin (American) life in “the City”, an experience the opposite of the rural, “natural world” of Macondo, the archetypal “Latin American Country” presented in the literature of Magical Realism. Philosophically, the McOndo vs. Macondo intellectual opposition is to the latter's literary perpetuation of Latin America as an exotic place of exotic people, which presents the reader with “reductionist essential-isms that everyone in Latin America wears a sombrero and lives on trees”. Because not everyone wears huaraches and sports a machete in contemporary Latinoamėrica, McOndo literature shows it to be a place of many countries, peoples, and cultures, not the monolithic, “Spanish-speaking worlds” of the 19th-century dictator novel and the banana republic which preceded 20th-century modernization.

The realistic narratives of McOndo literature refer and allude to the popular cultures of the U.S. and of Latin America as lived in the cities and suburbs of contemporary Hispanoamėrica — thus the gritty, hard-boiled depictions of poverty and crime, of the local economic consequences of globalization, of social class differences, of sex, gender, and of sexual orientation. Despite McOndo literature often being about the social consequences of political economy, the narrative mode usually is less overtly political than that of magical realist literature. The Bolivian-American academic Edmundo Paz-Soldán said that McOndo narrators “move with ease in a world of fast food and fast culture . . . they are the first generation of writers more influenced by mass media than by literary tradition.” Although initially associated with the Mexican Literatura de la generación del crack. (the Literature of the Crack Generation), which arose in the mid–1990s in counter-reaction to the literary Latin American Boom (1960s–70s), the writers of the McOndo literary movement tell the contemporary experiences of being a Latin American man and a Latin American woman in an urban (and suburban) world that is culturally dominated by the pop culture of the United States.

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Answer 8

McRefugee

McRefugees is a neologism and McWord referring to those who stay overnight in a 24-hour McDonald's fast food restaurant.

The term was first created in Japanese language: マック難民 (makku nanmin). That term had been largely replaced by ネットカフェ難民 (nettokafe nanmin), literally "net cafe refugee". In Japan, most McDonald's restaurants are operated around the clock. Due to unemployment and high rents and transportation costs in Japan, McRefugees choose to stay at a McDonald's overnight.

The phenomenon and word spread to Hong Kong as 麥難民 (mahk naahn màhn), where some McRefugees play video games and are known as McGamers. McDonald's opened 24-hour branches in mainland China in September 2006, which quickly attracted McRefugees.

In early October 2015, the death of a woman in a 24-hour Hong Kong McDonald’s restaurant in Kowloon Bay brought attention to the problem of McRefugees. McRefugees can be found in other 24-hour branches as well. Among the more than 1,600 homeless people in Hong Kong, about 250 are McRefugees.

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Answer 9

McTwist

Aerials (or more commonly airs) are a type of skateboarding trick usually performed on half-pipes, pools or quarter pipes where there is a vertical wall with a transition (curved surface linking wall and ground) available. Aerials usually combine rotation with different grabs. Most of the different types of grabs were originally aerial tricks that were performed in ditches, empty pools, and vert ramps before flatground aerials became common. Aerials can be executed by ollieing just as the front wheels reach the lip of a ramp, or can be executed simply by lifting the front wheels over the coping (or lip). The former is preferable on shallower ramps where the skateboarder has less speed to lift them above the ramp.

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Answer 10

McWorld

McWorld is a term referring to the spreading of McDonald's restaurants throughout the world as the result of globalization, and more generally to the effects of international 'McDonaldization' of services and commercialization of goods as an element of globalization as a whole. The name also refers to a 1990s advertising campaign for McDonald's, and to a children's website launched by the firm in 2008.

Critics claim that fast food chain restaurants such as McDonald's are destructive towards many aspects of the indigenous cultures in countries where they have been introduced.

In March 1992, an article first published in The Atlantic Monthly by Rutgers political science professor Benjamin Barber entitled "Jihad vs. McWorld", described international commercialization as one of two great clashing forces of the 21st century, the other being tribalistic fundamentalism. According to his writing, there are four imperatives which constitute the McWorld: a market imperative, a resource imperative, an information technology imperative, and an ecological imperative. The four imperatives are transnational, transideological, transcultural and ecological. The contracting idea of McWorld, the Jihad, unlike those four imperatives, stress identity of each community.

The clashing forces results from what Barber explains as the two core doctrines of our age: globalism and retribalization. It was expanded and published in 1995, and became a bestselling book. McWorld does not necessarily relate to democracy. It cares about the elements of democracy, but only to the degree that it promotes economic production and consumption. In the book, Barber explains that liberalization of nation state oriented markets to a globalized market does not seem democratic. Democracy and liberal capitalism are terms commonly used as a correlation; how democracy leads to capitalist economy and vice versa. However Barber argues that multinational corporations pursuing profits outside their home country due to competition has less correlation with open society.

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