"Drag Queens Talk Like Women, You Know" : A Study in the Use of the hedge "You Know" in feminine-gendered Speech

Abstract: The aim of this study was to analyze and compare the use of the verbal hedge "you know" in the spontaneous speech of women and drag queens to compare for instances of certainty and uncertainty as described by Holmes (1986). For the data, episodes of the reality shows RuPaul’s Drag Race Untucked which airs on Logo TV and The Real Housewives of Orange County which airs on Bravo TV were manually transcribed by the conventions of written speech. The use of "you know" was then analyzed by function and context. In the results of this study, the women used "you know" to express uncertainty more often than the drag queens, except not in the way Lakoff (2004) described as being an aspect of "women’s language." The drag queens used "you know" more often to express certainty. However, when used to express uncertainty its use by the drag queens was more relevant to "women’s language" as described by Lakoff (2004) or an exaggerated performance of femininity.