THE SOCIAL-INTERACTIONAL ORGANIZATION OF NARRATIVE AND NARRATING AMONG STROKE PATIENTS AND THEIR SPOUSES

This study examines interviews with men who have experienced strokes. 'Control interviews' with persons who had experienced health problems not related to stroke were also conducted, and they are considered her e as well. Unlike most studies of stroke patients' linguistic competen ce, which examine subjects in isolation and in clinical settings, thes e interviews were conducted in the patients' homes, with the patients' spouses present in all of the interviews, The analysis concerns the w ays in which the spouses participate in the telling of narratives that describe the unfolding of the stroke event as such. At the beginning of every interview with stroke patients the interviewers asked what ha ppened during the stroke proper. The spouses' participation in these s tories is significant and sustained, whereas the patients' own mastery of such narratives is meagre although the narratives comprise details from their personal somatic experience. We specify several discreet i nteractional patterns that make up the stroke patients' dearth of agen cy in these tellings, compare the interactional dynamics in the interv iews with 'control' patients, and discuss the significance of these in teractional minutiae for the patients' well-being and also for sociolo gical investigations of 'the brain' and related issues.