This article proposes to evaluate the relevance of the saussurian concept of language. First of all we remind the theoretical context of this concept; in a further time we show : I) that it represents the amalgam of several concepts more fundamental that it is important to dissociate; II) that it fails to give an account of the variation as well diatopic as diastratic; III) that language, that one defines it in the manner of Saussure or a more flexible way, is not the necessary framework of any linguistic analysis. We are thus led to propose several concepts allowing to make the economy of the concept of language in all the cases where this one is not operational.