Rethinking Cultural Identities in the Context of Globalization: Linguistic Landscape of Kazan, Russia, as an Emerging Global City

The article looks at two possible directions of cultural identity changes taking place in the era of globalization, analyzing the underlying forces and motivation behind certain shifts in linguistic and cultural behavior. Conformity to the leading dominant culture acquired through lingua franca at the expense of erasing parts of one's original mother tongue and cultural identity is juxtaposed to deliberate preservation and enhancement of minor cultural identities and minority languages. Linguistic landscape of Kazan is analyzed as an example of initially bilingual urban entity turning multilingual due to globalizing trends.