Background

Eason graduated with first-class honours in English Studies and Translation from the University of Hong Kong (HKU). As part of his studies, he spent a semester at the University of Edinburgh, where he focused on speech production and perception, phonology, and acoustic correlates of phonological contrast.

Previous Research

Before joining Oxford, Eason gained substantial research experience. His undergraduate thesis, titled “Top or Bottom? A Cross-linguistic Study of Homosexual Cantonese-English Bilingual Males’ Voiceless Sibilant Production" contributed to the understanding of the sociolinguistic indexicality related to sexual orientation. This research examined the variations and acoustic correlates of sibilants among bilingual speakers, with a particular focus on Cantonese-English bilinguals. Eason's work was pioneering in exploring these variations within a Cantonese-English context and in addressing the nuanced identities within the homosexual community, which are often overlooked in existing literature.

Eason served as a research assistant at both the Faculty of Education and the School of Chinese at HKU. At the Faculty of Education, he worked on a project on language attitudes in teaching English and Chinese as a Lingua Franca. Meanwhile, at the School of Chinese, Eason was responsible for maintaining the Newssary mobile application and the Resources for Interpreting website, both of which serve as instrumental toolkits for professional interpreters and translators. In his role, he curated over 600 bilingual Chinese-English entries from current affairs for these platforms, enhancing their value as resources for language professionals.

Eason also worked as a research assistant at HKU’s Speech, Language and Cognition Laboratory, where he contributed to a project focused on the incidental learning of Thai tones. His responsibilities included developing online versions of tasks and experiments, testing participants, and translating various research materials from English to Chinese. Additionally, at the same laboratory, Eason prepared a manuscript on the effectiveness of high-variability phonetic training (HVPT) and conducted empirical research examining the impact of incidental HVPT on the acquisition of nonnative vowels and lexical tones by adult learners.

Eason completed a fully funded twelve-week research internship at the Child Language and Speech Studies Laboratory at the University of Toronto. Under the supervision of Prof. Elizabeth Johnson, he collaborated with PhD students and postdoctoral researchers on various developmental sociolinguistics projects. These included studies on gendered speech and accents, as well as an investigation into the psychological phenomenon known as the illusory truth effect. Eason’s responsibilities encompassed data analysis, literature reviews, research proposal development, stimuli selection and manipulation, and experimental design.

Current Research

Eason is currently engaged in research on Zhanmi (or Jianmi), a language spoken by around 100,000 individuals in Eastern Guangdong Province, China, which is classified as ‘threatened’ on the EGIDS scale of language endangerment. His proposed MPhil thesis, titled “Vowels in Canton-Zhanmi: System and Diachronic Change”, focuses on the vowel inventory of Chishi Zhanmi, a variant significantly influenced by Cantonese. Eason is passionate about uncovering the unique phonetic features of Zhanmi and understanding how the dominant Cantonese culture and regional language policies have shaped its evolution. His goal is to contribute to the preservation of Zhanmi's linguistic heritage, especially given the minimal and fragmented historical documentation that has left significant gaps in our understanding of this language.

Through his research, Eason aims to address these gaps in the literature on minority languages and highlight their importance. He enjoys exploring the complexities of sociophonetics, striving to provide a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of language change and preservation.

 

Hobbies

In his free time, Eason is a huge fan of snooker. He also plays the recorder with the Oxford Baroque Players.