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Four « schools » of current French sociology are used to present four ways of defining the individual with respect to four conceptions of language. In Bourdieu's « scientific » sociology the social being is an « agent », using an instrumental language in the thick of the action; in Crozier and Friedberg's strategic analysis the strategist is an « actor » using a language of action which becomes a metalanguage centred on action; Dubet's clinical socio-logy treats the actor as a unique subject combining language registers, and the hermeneutic approach of Demazière and Dubar considers the subject as the author of a personal story in which he appropriates a discursive world.