The traditional approach to writing in terms of the code model of language leads to functional illiteracy, affecting individual and social cognition as adaptive behavior in a consensual domain of co-ordinated interactions, or languaging. Leaning on the biology of cognition, the paper emphasizes the orientational function of texts in establishing a culture-specific relational domain of linguistic interactions sustaining the unity of a languaging community as a living system distributed across space and time. The exploding use of Anglicisms in modern Russian public texts is indicative of dramatic changes in language and culture that may be described as hybridization. Based on an analysis of a large sample of Russian hybrid public texts, it is suggested that unhindered cross-cultural interaction poses new challenges for cognitive development of language-specific cultures outside the Anglo-American world, making real the danger of losing their cultural identity. Relevance: The biology of cognition principles are applied in analyzing an ongoing large-scale linguistic change caused by a shift in the orientational values of Russian society as a living system.

Following the theme of an earlier discussion in the Russian Journal of Communication, the paper offers an alternative to the traditional approach to linguistic change based on the “living organism” metaphor. This metaphor is shown to be inadequate, and massive linguistic change is viewed in the framework of the biology of cognition as an ecological phenomenon, affecting both society and individuals as third-order and second-order living-systems. The driving force behind the changes occurring in Russian, it is suggested, is ecological in nature and consists in mingling semiotic values that serve as points of orientation in two different third-order living-systems with their specific cultures. As a result, one might speak of orientation to a different culture with a different system of values, along with rejection of traditional values, including the value of the Russian language. Relevance: Linguistic change is viewed in the framework of the biology of cognition