ABSTRACT
Before the story of my life in the Communist, post-Communist Poland, and the United States is presented and analyzed from the critical discourse and emancipation perspective, terms such as “discourse” and “emancipation” need to first be addressed. What is a discourse? Gee (1989) defines discourse as an “identity kit” (p. 7) that comes complete with appropriate costume and instruction on how to act, talk, and often write. Thus, discourse is a registrar, a specific environment and examined reality for a specific group of people that they happened to live in. The people have a common understanding of issues that are characteristic for their particular environment/ registrar and use similar patterns such as language, ideology, political affiliation, dress code, manners, and such, which make up their culturally and historically conditioned discourse.
