A thirty year study tracking the changes in family life and language development in 300 working-class families from 1981 onwards.

1. On being long in company; 2. A boy finds his mama(s); 3. The closeness of strangers; 4. Embracing talk; 5. Lines of vision; 6. The hand of play; 7. Ways with time and words; 8. Shaping the mainstream.

Shirley Brice Heath, a leading social historian and ethnographer of family life, is Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic Literature and Professor of Linguistics, Emerita, at Stanford University. Her previous publications include Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms (Cambridge University Press, 1983) and On Ethnography (2008, with Brian Street).