El ceceo en Bagaces, Costa Rica: actitudes y conciencia lingüística

The overall aim of this master's thesis was to inquire more around the lisp (ceceo) in Bagaces, the linguistic awareness and the linguistic attitudes concerning said lisp. The main objectives were finding out if a) the people of Bagaces talks with a lisp, b) said people were aware of the existence of the lisp in Bagaces, and c) what linguistic attitudes they have towards it. I interviewed 36 inhabitants from the centre of Bagaces, evenly distributed between the sociolinguistic variables gender and age, as advised by PRESEEA. The interviews consist of loose conversation and a predetermined questionnaire concerning the hypothetical existence of the lisp in Bagaces and therefore also the awareness the inhabitants may have about it. The questionnaire also included questions concerning attitudes the inhabitant may have towards the lisp. These answers were then analysed through different variables (gender, age, education) and compared within each variable. The results found in this study were that the participants use the [s] 88,4% of the time and that they use the [θ] 11,6% of the time when speaking freely. Most of the participants are indifferent towards the lisp although there are people who have positive attitudes, and very few people with negative attitudes towards the lisp in Bagaces. The majority of the participants answer that the lisp does not make the speaker more prestigious. This opinion seems to be shared throughout the different sociolinguistic variables. The vast majority of the interviewees like the lisp and how it sounds, whereas only a minority do not. This attitude is also well divided between the different sociolinguistic variables. A third of the participants say the lisp makes the speakers sound “weird” or “funny”, while the rest do not share this opinion. When asked if there are any jokes about the lisp or the people who lisp (ceceantes), quite a few answered yes. Despite this however, there were few people who came up with any examples. After analysing the linguistic consciousness of the participants, it is possible to divide the consciousness into specific groups: individual awareness and group awareness. Only 17% of the interviewees who lisp, while all the interviewees who don’t lisp, have individual awareness. The group awareness is very different from the individual one, given that 33% of the participants who lisp are aware of how others talk, but only 30% of the participants who don’t lisp are