The 16th century German theologian and professor Philip Melanchthon had this really nice passage about rhetoric. He said that the speaker should see what is good in a case, and what is bad. He should augment the good things and the bad things discreetly cover. And he should overwhelm with amplification the good things. Overwhelm with amplification. For ceremonial speeches, amplification is key. And I would say that tricolon and enumeratio can help with just this type of amplification. Now, tricolon is one of your best go-to devices. A tricolon is simply three parallel phrases of the same length in a series. So, Caesar's Veni, Vidi, Vici is a tricolon. And, there's FDR's great line about public speaking. Be sincere, be brief, be seated. That's a tricolon. Good style often shows up in threes, and a tricolon just capitalizes on this. Three generally works, since one phrase starts the pattern. We can recognize the pattern in the second phase and then we resolve it in that final phrase. Abraham Lincoln used a tricolon in his Gettysburg address. >> We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as the final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. >> More recently, President Dwight Eisenhower also deployed tricolon to amplify certain ideas in his 1953 speech, The Chance for Peace. >> Every gun that is made, every warship launched,eEvery rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of it's children. >> So this tricolon overwhelms with amplification. Now, let's say you've got more than three things you want to mention. That's fine, it can still sound good. Enumeratio is simply rattling off a list of ideas. And in this case, you can go on for a really long time, adding more and more traits in a way that it still sounds good. So for example, President Obama delivered a speech at Cairo University and in it, he talked about Muslims in America. >> Since our founding, American Muslims have enriched the United States. They have fought in our wars, they have served in our government, they have stood for civil rights, they have started businesses, they have taught at our universities, they've excelled in our sports arenas, they've won Nobel Prizes, built our tallest building, and lit the Olympic Torch. >> Enumeratio allows him to cover a whole bunch of ideas in a way that sounds good. And, I would say that enumeratio is particularly good if you want to give a general sense for something without having to go into depth. The rapid succession of ideas, that's what sounds good. That's what create a bigger picture of the subject. And that's what Ted Kennedy Jr. did when eulogizing his father, the Senator Ted Kennedy. >> There is much to say and much will be said about Ted Kennedy the statesman, the master of the legislative process and bipartisan compromise, workhorse of the Senate, beacon of social justice, and protector of the people. There is also much to be said, and much will be said, about my father the man, the storyteller, the lover of costume parties, the practical joker, the accomplished painter. He was a lover of everything French. Cheese, wine and women. >> [LAUGH] >> He was a mountain climber, navigator, skipper, tactician, airplane pilot, rodeo rider, ski jumper, dog lover and all-around adventurer. Our family vacations left us all injured and exhausted. >> [LAUGH] >> He was a dinner table debater and devil's advocate. He was an Irishman and a proud member of the Democratic Party. >> The key to enumeratio, I think, is vivid words and concise phrasing. So in that Obama clips, the verbs are key, right? They highlight the actions of American Muslims. Fought, served, won, built, so on and so forth. These are interesting verbs, they're vivid verbs but they're not repeated. There's no repeated verbs in there. Now Kennedy, goes the noun route, right? So piling up noun, upon noun, upon noun to give a bigger picture of his father. Each one of those nouns could sustain a paragraph, but here's the cumulative effect that we're interested in. And, we often want to emphasize core ideas or core values. That's what we do in these types of speeches, but it requires that we come at the subject from multiple angles. Tricolon and enumeratio are just two good ways of doing that. [MUSIC]
