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In making the case for a “sociology of language”, we wish to examine the identity, the questions and the boundaries of this field. We pursue three objectives in this contribution: to identity past attempts at founding the field, to discuss its challenges and problems today and, finally, to give an idea of possible applications by citing two research projects. Our mapping covers macro-sociological and micro-sociological approaches in the United States, Great Britain, Germany and France (first part). Insisting on the limits of a binary vision which opposes macro and micro traditions, we will show ways of going beyond this opposition through an emphasis on linguistic practices (second part). We will illustrate the analytical framework from the second part with two examples from sociological research in the third part, the first dealing with the practices of counselling job-seekers as practices of a new identity regime (Glady), the second with academic research as a discursive positioning practice of researchers (Angermuller). In these works, our starting point remains that the social comes true through linguistic practices and that linguistic practices are social practices. By demarcating ourselves from formalist linguistics, we reject the idea of language as a system of abstract rules and grammatical possibilities. Instead, we make the case for language as a human activity which mobilizes linguistic resources in order to realize social practices.