Eric Matheis is a Lecturer in the French Department at Columbia. He spoke with us about his journey with research, French, and the intersection of linguistics, philology, and second-language acquisition. Read on to learn about his new course, French in the World: A Linguistic Survey, (FREN 3414).
Can you tell us a little about yourself?
I have been a lecturer in the French Department at Columbia since 2014. I have taught primarily courses in beginning and intermediate French, along with French conversation and translation classes. I grew up in Kansas, and it was there, with no prior exposure to French home, I began my journey with the language in junior high school.
Your research is primarily in French and Occitan literature. How do you utilize linguistics in your research? Do you collaborate with linguists?
I took a few courses in linguistics as an undergraduate, and as a graduate student studied several ancient and medieval languages, including three classes on the history of French Language. For my Ph.D. dissertation, I applied mostly philological methods to analyze one genre of medieval French and Occitan lyric poetry. Significant overlap exists between philology and linguistics, though philology tends to focus more on historical and literary written texts, their meaning and cultural context. This work fostered a deep research interest in the Occitan language.
I have not formally collaborated with linguists for my research or teaching. However, here at Columbia, I relied on Meredith Landman and her expertise to help plan my course French in the World, which I’ll be teaching in Fall 2026, and I would look forward to the possibility of collaborating with linguists in the future.
We are eager to hear more about your new class, French in the World: A Linguistic Survey. What should people expect in studying French linguistics?
I originally proposed this course to meet the needs of undergraduate students in French at Columbia. While many French departments in the U.S. offer linguistics classes, they have historically been lacking at Columbia. While my primary background is not in formal linguistics, I have structured the course around three areas— the history of the French language, phonetics and phonology, and sociolinguistics—where my research and teaching provide a strong foundation.
While planning the course, I became aware of many students in Linguistics who had research interests involving French, and it seemed like a good idea to orient the course to them as well. I believe that a diverse cohort of students from both Linguistics and French will enrich class discussions, and allow students to learn more from each other. For Fall 2026 I’ve decided to teach in French to prioritize the needs of the students in my department (other students can write in English); I’m hoping that linguistics students interested in French will have the level needed (completion of Intermediate French II or equivalent). I am open to teaching the course in English in future semesters.
Along with the three-part structure of the course—the history of the French language, phonetics and phonology, and sociolinguistics—there will be a few common threads: an emphasis on spoken French; detailed attention to the phonetics, phonology, and prosodic features of modern French, and how these have developed over time; geographic, historical, and sociolinguistic variations, and their connection to class, gender, nationality, language policy, and the metropole-periphery dynamic; and the process of the standardization of certain varieties French. I’d also like to examine certain notions about correct or appropriate usage, which are quite prevalent among French speakers, in both private conversations and in public debate. Students who are interested in this could look at the work of Les Linguistes attérrées, a collective formed in 2023, as well as the reaction to it. Many students in the course will already be familiar with these language debates, and others besides; all will have their own experiences with French, and I hope that these will be an important part of the class.
You also research French language pedagogy. For the many linguistics students who are interested in foreign language instruction, can you speak on how linguistics is currently used in the field, both in French language instruction and at large? a. What are some ways in which you could envision it being used in the future? b. Are there particular ways it can be used by educators who are not teaching their native language?
The study of linguistics is excellent preparation for teaching a foreign language. The principles of linguistics, as elaborated in applied linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA), provide much of the framework for foreign language instruction, in terms of both theory and day-to-day practice. SLA and its classroom applications have evolved, largely in step with prevailing theories in linguistics, and I have witnessed a succession of pedagogical methods over many decades. Each of these models has its merits, and none has completely replaced the others preceding it. As a result, a certain eclecticism has become widespread in language teaching, including my own. In my French language classes, I draw from various SLA models, as well as other areas of linguistics, such as phonetics and phonology, syntax, and historical linguistics.
Regarding teaching a foreign language as a non-native speaker, this is an interesting question. Every institution where I have taught French has employed a mix of native and non-native speakers. Students and language programs value both kinds of speakers. While native speakers provide better examples of speech in the target language, non-native speakers often model the learning process more effectively, having navigated the acquisition of the language themselves.. And explicit training in SLA and other linguistics-based methods can help non-native speakers refine their language learning models and make them more effective (though of course this training is useful for native speakers as well).
As to the future of foreign language teaching, the obvious variable to consider is AI. While Generative AI is disrupting traditional pedagogy, it will undoubtedly facilitate novel methods of learning and practicing language skills. SLA and other linguistic models can provide a framework to evaluate AI performance and its pedagogical efficacy. But I’m not convinced that AI will lead to a net gain for the teaching or learning of foreign languages. It may be that, on balance, AI’s language abilities will discourage students from classroom study of foreign language, or from trying to achieve language proficiency at all. On the other hand, the increasing isolation of students (which AI is helping drive) may draw students more into classrooms, for the human connections to be found there. Findings from cognitive linguistics have indicated that face-to-face interaction, and a social and spatial context, facilitate language learning, and that screen time has negative effects, in early childhood and beyond. So I would expect language teaching in the future to concentrate more on the human-centered factors that linguistic research has identified as favorable to learning.
Language instruction is greatly related to sociolinguistics, as both a product and a perpetuator of current sociolinguistic sentiments. How should language instructors reflect on which varieties or linguistic features are being taught? Does this affect students’ perception of the linguistic standard? (consider varieties such as AAVE, Ivorian French, Dominican Spanish).
All language teaching must deal with both standardized forms and sociolinguistic variation. For French, there exists a range of standards across Europe, Africa, and North America. However, a kind of standard based on Parisian French enjoys prestige throughout the French-speaking world, and is dominant almost everywhere for the instruction of French as a second language, including pedagogical materials. The textbooks I teach with are not an exception, but I do supplement them with audio and video material featuring regional accents. I usually have a few students each semester who speak with a regional accent from Africa, Canada, Louisiana, or the Caribbean. These students usually wish to learn standard French from France, including pronunciation, though I feel it is beneficial for other students to hear their way of speaking.
In addition to excluding regional variation, the pedagogical standardized French largely leaves aside sociolinguistic variation. Some textbooks give relatively little attention to a common feature of French—the register of colloquial speech that almost everyone, regardless of social status, uses in everyday communication. Colloquial French differs markedly in pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax and morphology from standard French (as one might hear on a news broadcast, for example). In my French language classes, I do include discussion of the colloquial features that are common in France, and encourage students to explore colloquial French on their own. I try to emphasize the importance of context for colloquial speech, because of the possible consequences of not following usage rules. It is perhaps significant that the term glottophobie—discrimination or prejudice based on a person’s accent, patterns of speech, or vocabulary—was first coined in French.
So it’s a complex question for me: it would be desirable to be able to teach more sociolinguistic variation in French language classes, but there are important obstacles to doing so. I do look forward to exploring these issues further with students in my course, French in the World, this fall.
