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Evgeny KUZMIN
Chairman, Intergovernmental Council and Russian Committee,
UNESCO Information for All Programme;
President, Interregional Library Cooperation Centre;
Co-Chair, Conference Organizing Committee
(Moscow, Russian Federation)
Social Institutions Supporting Linguistic and Cultural
Diversity in Cyberspace: Roles, Functions, Responsibilities
Most nations in the contemporary world enjoy neither statehood nor
sovereignty. Their languages are not state languages because a majority of
countries are multiethnic and multilingual. Even in the best possible scenarios,
when governments and dominant ethnic groups are rigorously protective of
ethnic and linguistic minorities, most of their languages are still marginalised
to varying extents. They exist and develop (or decline) in the shadow of
the country’s dominant language, which is used in all spheres of influence—
political, economic, educational, cultural, scientific, etc.
Globalisation, various possibilities for migration in a context of high mobility,
and the rapid pace of urbanisation have made many ethnic minorities undervalue
their native language. Learning native language to talk with fewer and fewer
people on a decreasing number of topics is regarded as a blind alley. Meanwhile,
state and international languages garner a wealth of attention and research.
No language develops outside the context of its corresponding ethnos. At the
same time, urbanisation and globalisation encourage smaller cultures to merge
with the majority, and marginalize themselves. The knowledge and historical
and cultural experience stored within these cultures gradually vanish, as well
as the culture’s/language’s potential. Cultural and linguistic marginalisation is
thus an interrelated and multifaceted process; with the death of a language, its
unique carrier culture vanishes 1 .
All these and other factors lead to a dramatic decrease in the number of active
speakers of minority languages resulting in further marginalization (and
extinction – in extreme cases) of the less equipped languages with the smallest
number of speakers.
These issues are salient for nearly every country where two or more languages
cohabit. What can we do to stop or at last to hinder the process of language
1
In the context of this article, the term “culture” is used in the broadest sense to denote the entirety of salient
material, intellectual and emotional features of a given community or social group, comprising the arts and
literature, as well as lifestyle, the status of human rights, value systems, education, customs, traditions and
philosophy.