The effect of lecturers' gender on the use of discourse markers

This study is an attempt to see if there is any significant difference between Iranian and English male vs. female professors' use of four discourse markers (DMs) of 'well', 'OK', 'you know', and 'I mean' (as they are said to be the most frequently used DMs in English [Fuller, 2003]) in their academic lectures. For this purpose, some 20 lectures in Iranian context (10 male and 10 female lecturers' classes) were audio recorded and transcribed and then, they were compared with the transcription of 20 lectures with the same proportion in English context taken from MICASE. Based on the comparison, it was concluded that there are substantial quantitative and qualitative differences in the use of DMs and their pragmatic functions between Iranian and English male vs. female professors' lectures. This means that, the Iranian and English female professors used the four DMs much more frequently (significant quantitative difference) and also employed a wider range of the functions of the DMs (significant qualitative difference) compared to their male counterparts. Finally, some implications were presented.