Topoi en la serie Esclavos de la Corte Suprema de Quito (1702-1849)

Abstract

In this article, I will discuss a series of records from the Supreme Court of Quito pertaining to lawsuits between (former) slaves and their (former) masters. The petitions of the parties show a clearly marked structure and are characterised by the use of formulaic language. Furthermore, argumentative structures determined by the communicative situation can be observed; these include very general topoi, for example, the argument from authority –the authority being either legal or religious in the corpus– but also specific topoi related to slavery, such as the topos that a cruel treatment justifies a change of master.
My contribution will concentrate on the analysis of these argumentative structures in order to emphasise the fact that it is not only the high degree of formal codification that characterises the petitions of the corpus, but also a range of structural patterns of the content, selected according to the communicative situation.