This book is about the fundamental nature of talk in school science. Language as a formal system provides resources for conducting everyday affairs, including the doing of science. While writing science is one aspect, talking science may in fact constitute a much more important means by which people navigate and know the world--the very medium through which science is done. In this book, the author articulates a view of language that differs from the way science educators generally think about it. Knowing language, in this view, is no longer distinct from knowing one's way around a particular section of the world. It is a non-representational view of language and dispenses with language as a barrier between the individual subject and the world it knows. In addition, the book includes detailed analyses from actual classrooms to exemplify what such a different approach means for science education. The conclusion is that once people have learned new ways of articulating the world and talking about it, they also have learned to handle this world more easily. This book contains the following chapters: (1) Introduction; (2) Taking Position and Orienting in the World; (3) Coevolution of World and Language; (4) Contingency of Explanations; (5) Public Language, Private Talk; (6) Teaching: Mediating Access to World and Language; (7) Adopting New Ways of Talking: A Question of Origin and Control?; (8) Mediation of Language: Space, Physical Orientation, and Group Size; and (9) Epilogue: Language and Science.