On 21 May 2026, the international seminar “Language as a Vehicle of Intangible Cultural Heritage” was held at the University of Warsaw on the occasion of the World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development.
As Chairholder of the UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage in Public and Global Governance at the University of Warsaw, I co-organised the seminar together with the Centre for Research and Practice in Cultural Continuity at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”. The event brought together researchers, practitioners and heritage experts to discuss linguistic diversity, cultural continuity, heritage governance, and the impact of digital technologies and artificial intelligence on living heritage.
The seminar approached language not simply as a communication tool, but as a living cultural infrastructure through which communities transmit memory, ecological knowledge, values and ways of understanding the world. Throughout the discussions, language emerged as inseparable from identity, environment, wellbeing and social relations.
In the introductory session, together with Prof. Justyna Olko, I reflected on the role of language in the framework of the 2003 UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. I discussed the paradoxical status of language in the Convention: language is not recognized as intangible cultural heritage in itself, but rather as a “vehicle” through which intangible cultural heritage is expressed and transmitted.
This formulation reflects broader political tensions around minority rights, sovereignty and identity politics. While it enabled wide international acceptance of the Convention, it also left many linguistic communities in a fragile position, as institutional support often depends on framing language as part of broader cultural practices rather than as heritage requiring direct safeguarding.
The seminar also addressed the relationships between language, identity, wellbeing, ecological knowledge and cultural continuity. Speakers emphasized that when a language disappears, communities lose far more than vocabulary or grammar: they also lose oral traditions, social relations, emotional frameworks and culturally specific ways of understanding the world.
The discussions continued in two roundtables. The first focused on minoritised languages and cultural diversity, including Warsaw urban speech traditions and the revitalisation of Wymysiöeryś, the language of Wilamowice. The second roundtable addressed technology and artificial intelligence in intangible cultural heritage, including the risks of digital extraction, algorithmic standardisation and the loss of community control over cultural knowledge shared online.
The seminar showed that linguistic diversity is not a marginal cultural issue, but a crucial question for heritage governance, democratic participation, cultural resilience and the future of plural societies in an increasingly standardised and technologically mediated world.
A full summary of the seminar is available on the website of the UNESCO Chair on Intangible Cultural Heritage in Public and Global Governance.
