Tetracolon COP

Or hendiatris+1. One step beyond a tricolon. A rhetorical scheme with four elements.

In the oratory of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, he chose this as the way to ensure headlines followed his recent address to the Youth COP26 conference;

Coal Cars Cash Trees.

Repeat.

It’s all in the delivery.

There are four pillars to the policy. Each with a simply summed up description.

The whole pitch over in under a minute.

From a politician renowned for being a student of rhetorical ability.

Whether you lie at the glueing yourself to roads extreme of climate emergency, the opposite pole of hardcore climate denial, or any position in between, the framing above will have made you sit up and take notice.

Which is the intent of any mantra.

Where are there four ways you can help your prospect?

Something you can wean them off? Another that you can swap out? The reasonable investment required? And finally a tangible action to wrap up direction?

‘We can turn this thing around and there are four things that we want to come out of today. Four big changes in the approach and they are very easy to remember…’