Социально-педагогические и психологические аспекты билингвизма

Article brings attention to the extralinguistic qualities of bilinguals: paradoxes of two-cultural identity, dialogical world image constructing, psychological markers of the bilingual.
Interviews with teenage bilinguals show that language identity not always coincides with the cultural and ethnic, and components of identity can express themselves differently in communicative behavior.
To understand psychological features of the bilingual one needs to know how the multilingual child constructs his picture of the world with the use of several languages. These psychological features represent a new resource for society with respect to the cross-cultural communication.
Modern society is not ready today to "accept" the unique potential of the bilingual, which leads to the lack of understanding he often encounters in the education system, the family and the society. This slows his identity development as well as prevents the society from benefitting from the bilingual’s unique resources.