Digital Transformation and Its Consequences for Heritage Languages

Abstract

The article attempts to conduct a primary analysis of the consequences of digital transformation for heritage languages which make up the cultural and historical legacy of individual ethnic communities. In a multilingual society, such a study requires an integrated approach, which takes into account the sociolinguistic parameters of various target audiences, communication channels aimed to disseminate and transfer information, discourse analyses of lin-guistic means, as well as extralinguistic factors impacting the development of different environments. It is equally important to study the specificity of the socio-cultural interaction between communicants in the professional sphere, which primarily indicates the institutional status of participants in communication, as well as their observance / nonobservance of linguistic norms. The latter seems extremely important with regard to heritage languages and their linguistic status in institutional discourse. In many respects, observance / nonobservance of linguistic norms makes it possible, on the one hand, to define the linguistic portrait of the communicant and, on the other hand, to assess the survival of national identity. Both aspects are central across various types of institutional discourse, including political, marketing, ad-vertising discourse etc. The analysis of the institutional aspects of cross-cultural and cross-lingual communication is carried out using an etiological approach that allows to determine the degree of importance of sociolinguistic parameters to achieve adequacy of socio-cultural interaction of representatives of different linguocultures. It is performed indirectly using vari-ous language pairs, in the context of heritage bilingualism, as well as interpersonal interaction. The article also expounds consequences of the global turn towards digital transformation affecting the overall knowledge in liberal arts and human sciences in general and cross-lingual and cross-cultural communication in particular. The study discusses areas of application of heritage language resources such as locus branding, image making, reports of scientific and technical achievements, etc. The article concludes by inferring the need to preserve linguistic diversity and its teleological use in various types of institutional discourse.