Ah, in my younger days how I would have lusted for the Gold Medal of Philology! To get up on a stage before a glittering international crowd and give a carefully prepared speech humbly acknowledging that my ground-breaking work on the Indo-European zero-grade present formation was perhaps not without interest… Well, Kim Willsher of the Guardian tells us how it all went down:
At a ceremony at the French national assembly attended by Nobel prize winners, former government ministers, MPs, decorated scientists and academics, all attention was on a previously unknown literature professor.
Florent Montaclair, then 46, a balding, bespectacled figure in an ill-fitting suit and rosé-coloured shirt, was receiving the 2016 Gold Medal of Philology – the study of language in historical contexts – from an international society of the same name. Montaclair was the first French recipient of the medal, previously awarded to the Italian author and academic Umberto Eco, those attending were told.
It was a glittering event and an impressive achievement – but unfortunately, detectives claim, the award itself was entirely fake and part of a complex international hoax worthy of a film script.
Although the ceremony did take place, there was no International Society of Philology. The American university to which it was supposedly affiliated existed only online and its address was given as a business services company in Lewes, Delaware. The award – likened to a Nobel prize – was invented by Montaclair, and the academic had bought the medal from a jeweller in Paris for €250 to present to himself. Now the professor is under investigation for suspected forgery, use of forged documents, impersonation and fraud. He denies any criminality.
Click through for the thrilling details; who knew philology was a venue for such goings-on? (Incidentally, I must point out that Lewes, Delaware, like its English namesake, is pronounced in two syllables: /ˈluː.əs/.)
who knew philology was a venue for such goings-on?
Hardly surprising. The big money always attracts the criminal element.
But the Deutscher Philologenverband does exist.
Or so they say! Apparently they’ve been around since 1903, but it could be a long con…
Well, I remember some of my teachers were members — but that was fifty years ago…
At the event he orchestrated, Montaclair had the politician Pierre Joxe bestow the medal on him… Another joke?
He has a lot of joxe!
Did Chomsky really turn up to collect his “Best Philologist Ever!” mug? Now that is hilarious… I wonder if some organisation like, I dunno, FIFA could pull off something like this on some unsuspecting sap?
“ The International Grooving & Grinding Association (IGGA) is the leading technical and promotional resource for acceptance and proper use of diamond grinding and grooving as well as pavement preservation/restoration. “
One Mister D. J. Trump appeared at their annual convention to award himself the BPE* medal with oak leaf clusters.
*Best President Ever, not to be confused with the Best Philologist Ever Medal, awarded once every third decade in honor of Leo Spitzer.
Lewes has experienced worse. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Lewes
Sounds like Lewes got the better of it, though I do feel sorry for the pig and the chicken.
It appears that the Americans learned an important lesson from the British failure:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/camel-lot/
Did Chomsky really turn up to collect his “Best Philologist Ever!” mug?
Chomsky said (in 2019, to the Romanian journalists who first exposed the hoax — link in the Guardian) he *did* go to Paris to give an invited talk, but didn’t remember any medal.
>The International Grooving & Grinding Association (IGGA)
There was once an office on Chicago’s Near West Side for a local of the Beef Boners and Sausage Makers union. Never saw anyone in the jacket or hoodie though.
EDIT: And it’s traceable — here’s their case against the namesake of my alma mater*:
Oscar Mayer vs. Beef Boners and Sausage Makers Local 100.
* I attended an elementary school by that name.
Beef Boners? Think I’ll pass.
Around 1978 I was with a management consulting boutique in midtown Manhattan. Whenever we began a new client strategy engagement our research department would check to see if there were any trade groups or publications that would give us useful context. To start that process they looked at a large volume called, if memory serves, the Encyclopedia of Associations. And so Grooving and Grinding came to my attention. No philologists were harmed in the process. Disco dancers? No comment.
A perhaps slightly pedantic point re “its address was given as a business services company in Lewes, Delaware.” The address given was that of the entity’s registered agent. In the for-profit segment of the U.S. economy, incorporation in Delaware is ubiquitous (something like 2/3 of the corporations in the S&P 500), and every such entity needs to have an in-state registered agent and a few big players dominate that field. So e.g. this building https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_Trust_Center is the current registered-agent address for hundreds of thousands of entities, including some quite well-known ones which do in fact have brick-and-mortar headquarters buildings located out of state. But if you look them up in certain databases compiled for certain purposes they will yield only that 1209 Orange St. address.
So what is noteworthy about the alleged university is not so much the mere existence of the address in Lewes of a registered agent shared by many many other entities,* it is the apparent lack of some other address where any actual university is actually operated. It is, to be sure, less common for non-profits whose primary operations are out-of-state to incorporate in Delaware than it is for for-profit entities, but there’s recently been a vigorous debate about whether more non-profits should do so rather than be legally set up wherever their physical headquarters is anticipated to be – there are both alleged potential advantages and alleged potential disadvantages.
*That’s the office of Harvard Business Services, Inc. (est. 1981), whose website explicitly discloses that it’s “not affiliated with Harvard University.”
This whole hoax sounds like the sort of thing Eco would have enjoyed immensely.
Chomsky’s is about the most un-philological kind of linguistics I can think of. This should have given it away.
Putting the LOL in philology.
Roberto Batisti: This whole hoax sounds like the sort of thing Eco would have enjoyed immensely.
I briefly toyed with the idea that he might have been in on the joke.
Have you watched the masterpiece, Footnote (2011)?
I have.