Attention to the language practices of school-age children and teenagers is essential for a complete understanding of how language use can vary in the social construction of everyday activity across the life span. This book examines a wide variety of language practices using data from naturally occurring recorded talk and careful observation of interaction in peer groups, and taking into account differences in setting, age, social class, race, and gender. The contributors analyze talk at play, at school, and at work, demonstrating the growing communicative skills of young people while focusing on what young speakers themselves do with and through language. Chapter titles include the following: "Games of Stance: Conflict and Footing in Hopscotch"; "Register and Footing in Role Play"; "Accommodating Friends: Niceness, Meanness, and Discourse Norms"; "Developing Adolescent Peer Culture through Collaborative Narration"; "Multiple Codes, Multiple Identities: Puerto Rican Children in New York City"; "Bodytalk: Discourses of Sexuality among Adolescent African American Girls"; "Of Ritual Matters To Master: Structure and Improvisation in Language Development at Primary School"; "Register Shifting with Dialect Resources in Instructional Discourse"; "The Effect of Role and Footing on Students' Oral Academic Language"; "Finding Words, Finding Meanings: Collaborative Learning and Distributed Cognition"; "Speaking Standard English from Nine to Three: Language as Guerrilla Warfare at Capital High"; "Working through Language"; and "Noisy Talk: Conversation and Collaboration in a Youth Writing Group." Extensive references and an index are included. (KFT)