The purpose of the paper is to examine the discursive strategies of persuasion exploring the rhetorical

argument from community combined with linguistic politeness. Based on eighty reviews of two French

comedies, the author shows how the persuasive strategies reflect some methods used in advertising

discourse, especially with regard to the rhetoric principle of movere and delectare and indirect means

of interpretation, activated in discourse by the use of quantity and quality.

The paper aims at locating argumentation schemes with hidden premises derived from shared cultural knowledge ( topoi) within philosophical models of communication and discourse referring to inference and argumentation (Robert B. Brandom’s semantic argumentation and related theories, Jean‑Claude Anscombre and Oswald Ducrot’s theory of argumentation‑in‑language). These models enable comparison of argumentation and topics with other inferential mechanisms that underlie communication. A solution for the problem of mutual knowledge, relevant from the viewpoint of topics, is scrutinised from psychologically‑ and sociologically‑oriented perspectives.

The aim of this article is to analyze and interpret way in which a topos of Cain was evoked in literary works and other texts of culture in the light of the concept of transgression. An approach adapted in analysis will be inspired by comparative hermeneutics, yet not only literary contexts will be taken into consideration, but also religious, philosophical, and scientific ones. In the very structure of the topos one can discern a series of binary oppositions, which become valuated in various ways in different historical contexts. It is above all the opposition between destructive and constructive component of the theme. Interpretations of the topos in the works of George Byron, Władysław Orkan, and Jerzy Andrzejewski are discussed deeper. The analysis leads to the conclusion that in the historical development of a significant change in its valuation is taking place. Regarded as a symbol of evil in the Middle Ages, it is ennobled as a patron of rebels, reformers and creators in the twentieth century.

This article is built on the premise that the topos has become a potent unit of cultural memory, an image that stores a wealth of often vague, buried or forgotten ideas. Its contents, like those of literature, tend to become extraordinarily condensed and confl ated; in consequence, some topoi (in particular the Holocaust topos) defy conventional tools of understanding and analysis. A solution to this problem can be found in an approach which broadens the scope of the sources of the Holocaust to include pop culture; gives up the rigid classifi cation of topoi, based on ‘hard’, documentary evidence; and, draws on a conceptual frame that connects the topos with the mechanisms of remembrance. A practical application of this approach is offered here in a series of readings of selected passages from Marcin Pilis’s novel The Meadow of the Dead (Łąka umarłych), Zygmunt Miłoszewski’s crime story A Grain of Truth (Ziarno prawdy), Marcin Wolski’s alternate history novel Wallenrod, Justyna Wydra’s war romance The SS-man and a Jewess (Esesman i Żydówka), Krzysztof Zajas’s thriller Oszpicyn [local Yiddish: Auschwitz] as well as some poems by Jacek Podsiadło from his volume The Breguet Overcoil (Włos Bregueta).