Sōlus

Diary Entry: October 10, 2024

Today featured another riveting lesson from Professor Pigou on the subtle art of English grammar and pronunciation. As is my tragic flaw, I was an active participant — or tried to be. My hand shot up constantly, a lonely flag of enthusiasm in a sea of academic calm. Yet, in a fascinating display of selective blindness common in American academia, the professor, sitting a mere meter away, failed to notice my existence roughly 99% of the time.

There’s a special kind of performance art in these moments. The professor is finally, reluctantly, forced to acknowledge the hand. He’s on the very cusp of uttering your name when — gasp — he spots another, more distant hand. You can almost see the gears whirring. It’s a moment of tremendous mental gymnastics. At the precise intersection of “calling on you” and “calling on anyone else,” his brain makes a heroic course correction. With a last-second flick of the wrist or a gaze that pierces straight through your soul to the back wall, he chooses his preferred student. Why must the simple act of calling my name be inflated into a matter of such operatic consequence? To what end are these histrionics, this elaborate choreography of avoidance? Is this penchant for performance simply woven into their very genes?

But I am nothing if not relentless. I am the lover who won’t stop until he gets the girl. The lawyer who, when kicked out the prosecutor’s door, simply finds an open window. I am Europe trying to “manage” Russia. I’m the stray cat who views a garbage bag as a dinner invitation. I am, in short, a good student. So, he eventually had to call on me. But that’s when the next phase of the game begins: Language.

You can try, but you can never quite scrub the foreign accent from the inner workings of your jaw. I said the word “solely,” which apparently did not compute for Professor Pigou’s finely tuned ears. He had me repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it. And repeat it. Finally, the grand revelation: the word is not pronounced “SOHL-leh-lee,” but “SOHL-lee.” The mortification was real, a hot flush in front of the entire class. But then a thought occurred to me: why is my mispronunciation a source of shame, while for others, a lack of knowledge is worn as a badge of honor?

It all reminds me of the Vis Moot competition two years ago. I was coaching the team, and I poured everything I had into it. We were a formidable team, truly worthy of applause (though the expected applause was conspicuously absent, particularly from those who should have led it — our dean, for example, mastered a stoic silence). The way we lost felt less like a defeat and more like a beautifully orchestrated piece of theater by the organizers.

I remember when they announced the 60 teams advancing to the elimination rounds; we were called dead last. I had my eyes shut the whole time, praying to a Jesus. We deserved it, 100%. In the round of 32, we won by a landslide. But then came the match to get into the top 16. The opposing team was good. Very good. The kind of good where, right after the match, you know you’ve lost. The kind of good where you feel if you played them ten times, you’d lose all ten. Still, looking back, I can’t help but notice the charming little traps and biases laid out for us.

We entered the room first and sat together. Then the opposition arrived, a much larger contingent. Finally, the presiding arbitrator, a witty English-speaking lawyer, took his seat. He immediately launched into some top-tier observational comedy, pointing out how we were sitting on opposite sides of the room. “Such a sharp divide!” he chuckled. Someone noted that since we were both funded by Americans, we were really all friends. A truly symbolic comedy. Behold the American mission statement made manifest: to act as a global conduit for harmony, heroically supplanting the imminent threat of... procedural violence.

One of our speakers, in a gesture of goodwill, stood up to give the arbitrator his card. The arbitrator waved him off. “Sit down,” he said, not wanting a “second introduction.” Fair enough. But when the formal introductions began, he suddenly developed a severe case of name-deafness. Our speaker was burdened with a name of profound, almost tedious, historical significance; truly one of those great names from the ancient world, so common it was perhaps second only to ‘George’ in the grand census of humanity. You take a guess. Yet Mr. Presiding Arbitrator wrestled with it for a full minute, mangling the pronunciation and even confusing it with its female version, despite it being written on a large piece of paper right in front of him. Our other speaker, a girl, faced the same routine but shut it down quickly by pronouncing her name with the force of a little wolverine. She was not to be trifled with.

Then came the “controversial” decision to make our team plead first on both procedural and substantive issues, which went against our agreement and is, for anyone who knows Vis Moot, a profoundly unfair handicap. But the real masterstroke was purely linguistic. Early in the competition, we had pointed out a slight procedural flaw in the case hypothetical — a party was requesting to merge two arbitrations, but the second arbitration hadn’t even been initiated yet. It was a bit awkward, procedurally speaking. Perhaps pointing out this tiny imperfection in their carefully constructed universe annoyed the organizers, because they used it as the very weapon to take us down.

Mr. Presiding Arbitrator leaned in and asked our speaker if he was asking the tribunal to do something as a “hypothetical.” Our speaker, confused, said no. The arbitrator was relentless. “But what you are asking for is a hypothetical.” Now, to appreciate the genius of this, you have to be a lawyer. Courts don’t deal in hypotheticals; anything “moot” or “illusory” gets thrown out. By repeatedly using the word “hypothetical” without explaining his meaning, he was backing our speaker into a corner, essentially putting the answer in his mouth.

And our speaker, unfortunately, walked right into the trap. “Yes,” he said. And though he tried to claim that this admission was negated by his other arguments, it was all the arbitrator needed. The damage was done. A beautiful, subtle assassination by semantics. And so we learned the ultimate legal lesson: substance is irrelevant when your opponent controls the definitions. He then posed the same confusing question to the other team. Their speaker, equally baffled but clever enough to sense danger, also said yes — a mistake, as a procedural order had clarified that the tribunal should assume the second arbitration would be initiated.

And just like that, we lost. Linguistically.