The ‘Digital Natives’ and the Crossroads of Indigenous Languages, Literatures and Identities

The bulk of scholarly works on digital humanities and the tendencies of e-society, tend to emphasize the need for the so called ‘backward nations’ to innovate, brace up and hook on to the e-globalization grid, but not much attention has been given to the negative impact of digitalization on critical cultural infrastructures of the vast majority of societies at the peripheral, communal spaces, where the digitization wavelength continues to penetrate and redefine. The thrust of this paper is focused on the point that as the globalization-laden digitalization phenomenon continues to destabilize the existing indigenous socio-cultural order, pervading the indigenous traditional systems including language and literary heritages, destabilizing knowledge systems, creating ’new’ lifestyle and realities, and distorting cultural identities and heritage of peoples and communities, steps must be taken towards preserving indigenous cultural identities of natural societies. The conclusion of the paper is that much as the postmodern digital society has created new and ’even world’, where humans now communicate without borders or restrictions across divides on the digital space, the shifting dynamics of human communication and cultural systems must be harnessed for the good in order not to destroy the long-existing communal identities and heritages of peoples, especially of those at the fringes of the world.

Keywords: Digital Natives E-Globalization Cultural Identities African Heritage

Author

• Udoinwang, David Ekanem
  Department of English, Akwa Ibom State University,
  Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria
  davudoinwang@gmail.com,
  davidudoinwang@aksu.edu.ng