Use of the English Language in Latvian Diaspora Identity Formation and Transformation

Serving as the global lingua franca, English plays a key role in the formation and transformation of identity across cultures. This article examines the use of English in texts written by members of the Latvian diaspora from the 20th to the 21st century, employing a combination of corpus analysis and discourse analysis. The goal of the present study was to compare the texts in different modalities and observe the salient features of Latvian identity in English texts. The texts analysed include a variety of Latvian diaspora blogs, Agate Nesaule’s text on the Latvian diaspora and four different textbooks produced by or for the Latvian diaspora. The preliminary findings suggest that the Latvian diaspora can be found in different parts of the world (Russia, Brazil, Australia, Canada, the UK and the USA), making the Latvian diaspora transnational and multilingual, often integrating the host and heritage languages into the English texts, which contain references in the form of Latvian proper names and family names. The analysis of Latvian language textbooks shows the use of proper nouns as a means of gaining access to Latvian cultural identity and constructing a multilingual identity.