The aim of this study is to examine the discourse particles you know and I mean from a gender perspective, but also to investigate if popular fiction and fictitious speech represent prior research on this subject. Prior research (Lakoff, 1975) has claimed that women tend touse discourse particles more frequently in order to soften utterances, and therefore expressing linguistic tentativeness. Janet Holmes (1995), on the other hand, has found that women and men tend to use DPs differently, but not that women are insecure communicators. In order to confirm or refute these researhers' claims, I have chosen to study the speech of two fictitious characters, Lucas Scott and Haley James, from the TV- Series One Tree Hill. The material consists of 17 transcribed conversations between the two main characters, and the method used was to compare and contrast my findings to previous research. The study is mainly qualitative, as I wanted to study how the characters use the chosen DPs. However, I will also discuss how frequently they use them. The result showed that the characters tended to use them in different manners. It was also evident that Haley uses the DPs more than Lucas, as she uses you know ten times and I mean seven times, whereas Lucas uses the first one seven times and I mean only once. Thus, the conclusions of the study are that the characters differ in their use of the DPs, but also that popular fiction, i.e. One Tree Hill, agrees with previous research on gender and discourse particles.