Part four: Bilingualism and cognition of St. Lucian disease terms

This study seeks to answer two questions: is there intra‐cultural variation in a sample of bilingual English and Patois speakers in St. Lucia with regard to the cognition of disease terms; and, if there is, what are the linguistic and sociocultural correlates of this bilingual variation? A cognitive mapping technique, the triad sort, is used to determine the cognition of a set of disease terms. Data were collected from a sample which maximized variance in sociocultural characteristics. A multivariate analysis of the data demonstrated intracultural variation in the cognition of disease terms which can be related to language proficiency. Implications of this study for future research are discussed.