Gender differences in the use of the discourse markers 'you know' and 'I mean'

The aim of the paper is to present the results of a study into gender differences in the use of the discourse markers you know and I mean. The data for analysis is taken from televised interviews, the methodology of the research combines qualitative and quantitative tools and involves mapping the functions of you know and I mean on the basis of previous research and the tokens in the test corpus, categorising the total number of occurrences in the full corpus as well as identifying co-occurrence patterns. The results seem to contradict previous claims that women use discourse markers more frequently as well as the hypothesis that men and women use discourse markers for radically different interpersonal and discourse functions.