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Imagine… As a freshly minted Bachelors student in Dutch and German languages and cultures, you move from Belgium to the Netherlands to complete your Masters programme in Linguistics. You socialise easily with Dutch people since you speak the Belgian version of Dutch despite having a slight accent. One day, you feel upset and try to communicate your anger to your friend, but her reaction is: “Aww, you sound so cute!” Although I was fluent in Dutch, my way of expressing myself would sometimes prevent people from recognising when I felt annoyed or irritated. What’s more, the more subtle “Belgian way” of communicating my feelings were unfamiliar to Dutch people who are known for their directness.

Experiencing these misunderstandings sparked my interest in how emotions are communicated in different languages and cultures. As Masters students, our internship required us to work with a researcher either in our home university or abroad. Around this time, I read an article by Prof. Jean-Marc Dewaele who did interesting research around language and emotion at Birkbeck University of London. Completely unaware of his standing in applied linguistics, I naïvely sent him an e-mail. I introduced myself and asked whether I could do my internship with him. Within an hour, I received a positive reply. Fortune favours the bold!

Setting up a research project

We set up a research project on native and nonnative English speakers’ ability to interpret the emotional state of an English interlocutor. This is crucial for communication as you might interpret what someone says quite differently depending on how you think this speaker is feeling. For example, a simple sentence such as “I had a good day” could be understood very differently depending on how it is being said, as well as cues including facial expressions etc.

During the internship, I learnt about creating video-stimuli with an actress and setting up an online questionnaire. I also gained experience in finding participants for the questionnaire, analysing and interpreting the data, and writing up my findings. There were many ups and downs due to technical issues. Not only that- my results initially were unexpected and appeared difficult to interpret. Nevertheless I enjoyed the research project very much. I was very keen to continue research!

I decided to write a PhD research proposal to follow this study and Jean-Marc Dewaele became my supervisor. My proposal focused on how native, nonnative, and “non”-speakers of Chinese understood a Chinese speaker’s feelings. As a result, Prof. Dewaele suggested that I work with a second supervisor, Prof. Li Wei from UCL. I also applied for and won a Bloomsbury PhD studentship. 

What I have learned during my PhD

My internship gave me a pretty good insight into research, but a three-year PhD requires a higher level of commitment. Familiarising yourself with the literature related to your own topic is a never-ending process. There is a fine line between feeling confident enough to conduct a particular study as an “expert” in your field and acknowledging what you know (and actually don’t know). After all, as Wernher von Braun said, “Research is what you’re doing when you don’t know what you’re doing”! My research is rather interdisciplinary, as I am combining theories from linguistics and psychology. Consequently, I found it challenging to define the scope of my project and its theoretical background.

One of the most important things I have learned is to accept that the journey to a doctorate is full of pitfalls, delays and disappointments. For me, a PhD is not primarily about the result, but about the process. It’s about being creative and finding solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems. I’ve also learnt to accept feeling distraught at some points and finding ways to bounce back. For me, a PhD is not only about developing academic skills, but also about discovering who I am both as a researcher and a person.

Pernelle Lorette is currently studying for a PhD through UCL and Birkbeck, University of London.