Graduate Series: an Interview with Shuting Liu
Felicia Lee
Shuting Liu is a doctorate student at the School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne. Her research interests lie in phonetics, specifically segmental and prosodic perception and production of L2 English speakers. She has previously worked at the technological firm, Appen, prior to her PhD journey.
Felicia interviewed Shuting about her experience in linguistic research, her PhD project, its significance and her advice to aspiring doctorate students.
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Hi Shuting, could you tell us more about your background and how you landed up doing a PhD at our school?
I completed my bachelor’s degree in English literature and English studies at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, China. Upon graduation, I worked in a bank in my hometown for two years. Then I came to Australia with my family and I commenced my studies in the Master of Research (linguistics) program at Macquarie University, Sydney under the supervision of Prof. Felicity Cox and Dr. Titia Benders. My research at Macquarie University involved a large-scale study of how Mandarin speakers, who are second-language English users and living in Australia, perceive Australian English vowels.
After I was conferred my master’s degree, I was referred to work for an Australian company named Appen, which is a technological company that generates data for Artificial Intelligence training. My manager at that time, Dr. Judith Bishop, who completed her PhD at SoLL, University of Melbourne under the supervision of Prof. Janet Fletcher, encouraged me to undertake my PhD with Janet after three years at Appen. Judith referred me to Janet and Dr. Olga Maxwell, so here I am!
My three years at Appen helped me to gain experience with ToBI, a framework to annotate prosody in speech. That’s what I found super interesting and is super helpful for my PhD project later.
Your bachelor’s degree was in English literature, and then you worked at a bank subsequently. What prompted you to complete two research degrees after that?
Well, I guess when I was working at the bank, I realised that I’m not really into banking. At that point, as I have mentioned previously, I came to Australia with my family, so I started to ponder, What do I really want to do in my life? I guess an easy way would be to embark on a programme to find my interest. Since I have some background in English learning and linguistics, I suppose I could pursue something along those lines. So I started looking at some research programmes at Macquarie University. What I found out was that they offer scholarships to students, so financially, that was taken care of. I am grateful for that programme because it actually led me to my love for research.
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It’s great that you’ve found your passion. So what is your current study about and what have you found out thus far?
My study now deals with intonation and prosody. Different speakers of languages will use pitch differently. For example, L1 English speakers associate varied pitch patterns with certain stressed syllables for pragmatic purpose while Mandarin speakers associated a pitch pattern with almost every syllable to convey semantic meanings. Therefore, Mandarin L2 speakers of English usually produce more pitch variation in an English phrase compared to L1 English speakers.
In my first year, I was trying to find out if the Mandarin speakers are actually producing more pitch variation compared to the L1 English speakers when they read an English sentence. In my second year, I investigated how the accentual pitch patterns produced by the Mandarin speakers are varied. For example, are they just producing high tones to signal lexical stress, or like L1 English speakers, they are using the accentual tones to signal focal prominence? Since the L2 English speakers concerned in my study live in Australia and are more exposed to Australian English than American or British English, I was hoping to find out if they picked up Australian English intonational characteristics, such as the use of the rising tone. What I found out was that, yes, the Mandarin speakers who had gained greater exposure to Australian English exhibited prosodic speech patterns in line with Australian English.
Why is your study significant, you think?
I guess it has some theoretical contributions to second language acquisition in general. Like I mentioned before, there are fewer studies dealing with prosody and intonation in this area, although intonation and prosody are important aspects of speech.
From the more practical perspective, this research can probably help L2 English speakers train their intonation in a more systematic way, if they’d like to. These findings can benefit automated speech production in software or applications as well.
I feel that intonation and prosodic features are also very important in terms of intercultural awareness and understanding intonation and prosody and their pragmatic functions could also help to reduce potential communication breakdown between different groups of people. It’s such a great project!
Yeah it’s a small part to contribute to that as well!
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So given that you’re in your final year of your PhD journey, what golden words of wisdom do you think you can share to help aspiring PhD students who are still climbing this proverbial mountain?
For me, I would say that my PhD journey is not going the way as I expected, but I guess that’s life.
Don’t feel disappointed about yourself when you do not achieve what your peers have achieved because everyone is experiencing different challenges during this journey. I guess that’s important to remember s*** happens, and sometimes you even will feel s*** hits the fan, but that’s okay. Remind yourself you can finish things up by breaking down the tasks. Be kind to yourself and celebrate what you achieve at the end of the day.
I would also like to share a poem by C. P. Cavafy entitled Ithaka, which I like very much and sums up what I would like to say about doing a PhD. The first line of the poem particularly encapsulates my perspective of how a PhD journey should be:
“As you set out for Ithaka, hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery.”
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That’s a really beautiful and inspiring poem. Thank you for speaking to me, Shuting!
Thank you, Felicia.