English maintenance in Costa Rica? The case of bilingual Monteverde

• Main Author: Watts, Keith Eugene
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-1999
• Subjects: British & Irish literature; British and Irish literature; Linguistics; Romance literature
• ISBN: 9780599414266; 059941426X

The rural village of Monteverde, Costa Rica was founded in 1951 by a small group of approximately sixty Quakers who left the United States seeking a peaceful location in which to settle. In spite of the fact that they are a small ethnolinguistic minority living within an area that is overwhelmingly Spanish-speaking, for almost half a century, members of this speech community have maintained English. The purpose of this study was to analyze those factors related to language maintenance, shift, and loss that manifest themselves in Monteverde, and to draw some tentative conclusions regarding the future of English in the community. Field research was conducted in 1995 and 1996. Linguistic and extra-linguistic: data were collected through direct observation of communicative interactions in public and private speech domains, as well as both informal and formal interviews conducted with bilingual community members. The formal interviews were tape recorded and involved the collaboration of thirty-one bilinguals from three generations, ranging in age from five to forty years. These thirty-one consultants also completed questionnaires that elicited demographic information, as well as language use patterns. Finally, bilinguals' proficiency in Spanish and English was rated by analyzing recorded speech samples. The data collected using this methodology revealed the following: (1) diglossia, which could prevent the loss of English, does not obtain in Monteverde; (2) all three generations of speakers involved in the study have native or near-native proficiency in English; (3) second- and third-generation informants all have native or near-native proficiency in Spanish; (4) shift to Spanish appears to be well-advanced in all domains of interaction, suggesting that English is on the way out as a first language; (5) although the heritage language will likely be displaced by Spanish in the near future, it will probably remain as an important second language in the community.