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The paper presents models of the mental lexicon in bilinguals and second language learners. Psycholinguists from Perm scientific institutions studied the mental lexicon structure reflected in association tests results, as well as in slips of the tongue. The materials reveal a mental network of lexical units from all familiar languages integrated on the basis of the phonetic similarity and semantic proximity. Graph simulation of the network allows for evaluating the distance between nodes and configuration of the word clusters for L1 and L2. The mental lexicon corresponds to the system of the perception patterns of the linguistic units. The patterns of phonetic words provide access to lemmas and concepts of the mental lexicon. These patterns need to be developed in the learner's L2 mental representation for speech processing. During the L2 speech perception the patterns approximate to those of a native speaker. Our studies have clarified the factors that improve British / American English native speech perception for native Russian speakers learning English as L2. Based on the results of these studies, we have worked out the method for teaching listening comprehension.

The paper presents the analysis of the semantic shifts in the lexical meaning of the lexeme bespredel (mayhem). The lexeme penetrates into the literary language from the jargon of criminals in 1990; its frequency dramatically increased in media and oral public communication. The shifts in its semantics were triggered by social transformations during Russian perestroika due to deconstruction of the socialist economy and political system. Bespredel in literary Russian acquired the meaning ‘extreme degree of chaos, when a person feels helplessness and vulnerability owing to violation of laws and rules’. According to the Russian national corpus, the word belongs to the media discourse while being rarely used in literature.

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