Produce notes on the diffusion of one of the selected cultural traits by the international movement of workers, tourists and commodities. Summarise the diffusions occurring for your selected cultural trait by completing the post on padlet.

Internet and China.

http://www.mcdonaldization.com/whatisit.shtml

In essence, McDonaldization is the process of rationalization

Rationalization is a sociological term that simply means the substitution of logically consistent rules for traditional (or illogical) rules. One of the fundamental aspects of McDonaldization is that almost any task can (and should) be rationalized.

The process of McDonaldization takes a task and breaks it down into smaller tasks. This is repeated until all tasks have been broken down to the smallest possible level. The resulting tasks are then rationalized to find the single most efficient method for completing each task.

It turns out that over-rationalizing a process in this manner has an unexpected side effect. It's called irrationality. In a sociological context that simply means that a rationalized system may result in events or outcomes that were neither anticipated or desired, and in fact, may not be so good.

According to Ritzer, the four main dimensions of McDonaldization are:

·  Efficiency- The optimum method of completing a task.

·  Calculability- Assessment of outcomes based on quantifiable rather than subjective criteria. In other words, quantity over quality.

·  Predictability -The production process is organized to guarantee uniformity of product and standardized outcomes. All shopping malls begin to look the same

·  Control - The substitution of more predictable non-human labor for human labor, either through automation or the deskilling of the work force.

The use of the word "vous" is a sign of respect, but even that seems to be getting lost in translation of the word "you". French speakers may be directly translating from the English word (which is the most used language in the social network) and therefore missing out on the more informal version of the word "you". "Tu" is also used as it "looks strange" to address someone with such respect, especially when most people "tweet" people they have met (and maybe never will meet).

What's most surprising is the speed at which it is occurring. Twitter was founded in 2006, yet 9 years later, it is already causing changes in languages that have existed for hundreds of years. Changes in languages also tend to take many years to actually take place, whereas this change is perhaps more significant and yet, it is happening at a much faster rate.

This change is so apparent, that it has spread to other languages like Spanish. The familiar "tu" dominates, with the formal "usted" a rarity. As in France, the normal writing style on Twitter in Spanish is "informal, direct and very personal". It is a common trend in many languages and if these changes continue, it is likely that the informal versions of "you" in many languages will be effectively dropped.