Tripartite motto

Tripartite motto is the conventional English term for a motto, a slogan, or an advertising phrase in the form of a hendiatris. Perhaps the best-known throughout the world is the motto of the French Revolution: Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. This is the verbal equivalent of the drapeau tricolore or three-colored French flag. The English language took the word tricolor from the French, but did not get a similar one for such a motto. The Italians, however, use the term trinomio for this purpose.

In rhetorical teaching, such triple iterations marked the classic rhythm of Ciceronian style, typified by the triple rhetorical questions of his first Oration Against Catiline:

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? quamdiu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? quem ad finem sese effrenata jactabit audacia?

In ancient Greece and Rome, such abstractions as liberty and justice were theologized. Hence the earliest tripartite mottoes are lists of the names of goddesses: Eunomia, Dike, and Eirene. These late Greek goddesses, respectively Good Order, Justice, and Peace were collectively referred to by the Romans as the Horae. Their list is remarkably similar to the Canadian motto, Peace, Order, and Good Government. The Romans had Concordia, Salus, and Pax, collectively called the Fortunae. The names of these mean Fraternity, Health, and Peace. Such deities differ from those who account for more cosmological matters, as they are first abstract concepts and only declared to be deities so that the common people of their societies would deem them important.

From the 18th century, the tripartite motto was primarily political. John Locke's Life, Liberty, and Property was adapted by Thomas Jefferson when he wrote the Declaration of Independence into Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which has become the American equivalent of the French triad listed above. Lenin and the Bolsheviks adopted a tripartite motto for the Russian Revolution, "Peace, Land, and Bread." During the New Deal, the projects of the President were summed up as Relief, Recovery, and Reform. Later the form was used for strident fascist patter, such as Fascist Italy's Credere! Obbedire! Combattere! This means Believe! Obey! Fight! Possibly the most famous Nazi slogan is also tripartite: Ein Volk! Ein Reich! Ein Führer!: "One people! One empire! One leader!". The modern motto of Germany: "Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit" (Unity and Justice and Freedom) is inscribed on the side of German euro coins, as it was on Deutsche Mark coins.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has an initialistic motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity, while the United States Military Academy at West Point has Duty, Honor, Country.

Very often triple mottoes derive from a turn of oratory in a speech; for example Abraham Lincoln's of the people, by the people, for the people in his Gettysburg Address, while a lesser-known and more sarcastic one is Spiro Agnew's Acid, Abortion, and Amnesty in a speech against George McGovern's candidacy in 1972.

These are common throughout Western civilization, but also appear in other cultures. The Japanese said that during their boom years, illegal immigrants performed the work that was Kiken, Kitsui, Kitanai, or Dangerous, Difficult, (and/or) Dirty.

The form is so well known that it can be played upon, as in the three requisites of Real Estate ("Location, Location, Location"), and similarly with Tony Blair stating his priorities as a political leader to be "education, education and education".

In German society, the tripartite motto Kirche, Kinder, Küche (church, kids, kitchen) was first a genuine Nazi slogan, and today is used sarcastically by young women to express their disdain for their traditional role in society. Kirche was also occasionally replaced with Führer.

See also