Revisiting the Subjunctive Mood: Great for Persuasion

A perhaps often overlooked technique that can help your writing gain some persuasiveness is the subjunctive mood. It’s possible that you remember the subjunctive less from your English classes than from your foreign languages classes—at least that’s the case for me. When learning to conjugate verbs in another language, you’ll often bump up against the subjunctive.

Verbs have moods. According to Patricia Osborn in How Grammar Works: A Self-Teaching Guide 182 (2d ed. 1999), mood “simply means the attitude of the speaker toward the words being spoken.” In English grammar, there are three moods: the indicative, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The indicative mood is the most common and indicates that the speaker is conveying meaning. For example, I look forward to warmer weather is written in the indicative mood. The verb to look is properly conjugated to match the subject, I. (Although my example is in the present tense, the indicative mood works in all verb tenses.) The imperative mood is for giving commands. For example, Hurry up! is imperative. Again, the verb to hurry is properly conjugated for the understood subject, you.

The subjunctive, by contrast, “uses an out-of-the-ordinary verb form to call attention to something extraordinary” (Osborn, 183). It is, as Osborn labels it in her text, “The [m]ood of [p]ossibilities.”

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Tell Me a Story

Little_Red_Riding_Hood_WPA_posterOnce upon a time . . .

I started my last post with those same four words, so I hope you’ll forgive me the repetition. They’re good words for a beginning (though perhaps not in a piece of legal writing!). But why are they such good words to start with? I could wax poetic about creating a sense of nostalgia for a time long past, where wonderful things were possible . . . but that’s not it. They’re good words for a beginning because we all know what comes after them: a story.

Stories are powerful things. For millennia, human beings have told each other stories. We pass down knowledge and wisdom, warnings and inspiration to each other through tales. Myths from cultures all over the world and all throughout history were created to explain natural phenomena, and to try to answer questions about the deeper meaning of human existence. Folk tales and fables teach lessons about hubris and humility, social values and the dangers of greed and other vices. In the Christian Bible, Jesus teaches using parables that will be familiar to anyone who went to Sunday School—the mustard seed, the prodigal son. Why? Isn’t it easier to say, for instance, “Don’t be too greedy!” than to tell the story of King Midas?

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Congratulations to Marquette’s 2015 Jessup Team

JessupCongratulations to 3Ls Xheneta Ademi, Tyler Nash, Frank Remington, and Patrick Winter for reaching the quarterfinals of the Philip C. Jessup International Moot Court Midwest Regionals in Chicago this past weekend.  In its 56th year, the Jessup Competition is one of the world’s most prestigious moot court competitions.  The Midwest region is comprised of 21 teams.  Our Marquette team went 3 and 1 to advance to the quarterfinal rounds.

Attys. and Marquette Law alumni Juan Amado (Jessup, 2011), Matt Tobin (Jessup, 2014) and Drew Walgreen (MU moot court, 2013), as well as Professors Megan A. O’Brien and Ryan Scoville served as team advisors.  This year’s Jessup problem involved treaty interpretation in light of a claim of fundamental change in circumstances; a state’s use of countermeasures in response to an alleged breach; and, procedural and substantive issues resulting from a seccessionist movement.  Congratulations, again, to our MU Law School team for their tremendous effort in tackling these complex international law issues.

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