Adverbial Clause Usage and Gender in English, Spanish, and French

This study examines adverbial clause usage by women and men in three contexts: (1) single-gender and mixed-gender meetings of a US social club, (2) single-gender and mixed gender dyads speaking Ecuadorean Spanish, and (3) French speakers in informal interviews. The English results generally support past findings that women tend to use adverbial clauses to weaken their expressed commitments to the propositions they express, while men tend to use more of the clauses that strengthen the expressed commitments. However, the situation affects the specific clause types used, and the English results are not replicated in the Spanish or French data.