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The authors situate the question of language practice at the very heart of the integration process, by insisting on the idea that, through their exchanges with others, speakers' social existence is at least partly linguistic. The indexicality of language use (being the author of a discourse inevitably means talking about oneself, the other, the situation) is studied here through interviews with social workers. The examples analyzed show that 'language' and 'society' are inseparable, each being a part of the other, which calls for an approach that does not attempt to separate language from its conditions of production and comprehension.