Change and Resistance: the discourse of post-communism: Who speaks and why? Company discourse- before and after 1989

Magdalena Bielenia
Institute of English
University of Gdańsk


The aim of this research is to discuss the discourse of post-communism in the vocational setting. An attempt will be made to elaborate on the issue of business discourse before and after 1989. We will start with the concept of Language for Special Purpose and its classification with regard to some economic activities and their time caesura. The next issue will deal with the notion of discourse community. This topic will also be discussed with relation to the change of the system. The discourse within a company will be presented by taking into consideration the age, sex and education of the interlocutors. We will also try to find out how not only the speech itself but the ways people behave due to their political or economic background determine the performance of the studied companies. To highlight this aspect of this research we will quote the studies conducted in some international companies which are ruled by foreign managers. We will also try to compare the attitude presented by Polish managers with the ones shared by their foreign colleagues. The next aspect which will be discussed in this study is whether the state of post-communism discourse is the same within the researched areas of economics. Thus, some novel domains such as investment banking or venture capital which were absent before 1989 will be presented in this research. The aim of this part is to show whether even the new domains have traces of post-communism discourse. What is more, an attempt will be made to predict the potential scenarios of the discussed economic discourse in the future.