THE BILINGUAL AS A PERSON -- LINGUISTIC IDENTIFICATION WITH STATUS.

The article studies the relation between bilingualism and personality development. The study is based upon seventeen case documents. Some of them are self studies, furnished by bilinguals. Bilinguals are highly intelligent persons, with some training in personal and social observation, and selected because they seemed to show evidence of a certain objectivity of insight into their own personality development. A second group of documents was obtained from members of the subjects' families, such as wife, niece, or cousin, who had opportunity for continued close association with the subjects and who have had some training in the obtaining and recording of social data. To understand the problems of the bilingual, it is necessary to appreciate the sociological role of language. Two facts are of prime importance. First, language is a part of the cultural achievement of a people, comparable to its family system, its economic life, or its religious life. Second, it is also a mechanism which transmits the rest of the culture system.