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Abstract:
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It has been argued that women and men use language quite differently in social interaction. Combining a functional and cognitive approach to grammar, this paper explores the ways in which men and women use the optional pronominal form of the Spanish verb salir(se) 'to leave' in Mexican Spanish. It is found that women use the pronominal form notably more than men, and that, diachronically, this form has traditionally been applied to women's behavior. It is hypothesized that these patterns demonstrate both the relative expressive freedom of women's speech, as well as the socially constrained nature of the expectations for female behavior in colonial and contemporary Mexican society. This paper shows how culturally shaped conventional construals of gender can both be reflected in and influence morphosyntactic phenomena. Keywords: Spanish, gender, energetic constructions.
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