Gender differences in the use of 'you know' as a discourse marker: A case study of university study group interactions

Abstract

This thesis investigates gender differences in the use of the discourse marker 'you know'. Based on the relevant theoretical background concerning both the functions and the former gender-related findings, I carry out a case study which concentrates on the use of 'you know' in university study group interactions taken from the Michigan Corpus of Academic Spoken English. The main goal of this paper is to find out whether female and male students employ the discourse marker differently in this special type of genre.