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Rural communities in the United States are often oriented toward the procurement of outside resources so that population and economic growth can occur. Western towns in harsh arid or semiarid environments seem especially prone to such a sociocultural pose. The idea of a "cargo cult" as a principle of community organization is useful in explaining how a small town can harness dramatic change for the good of local residents. This article reviews the significant features of cargo cults in Oceania and then applies the concept to a small community in the Western United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 here as well. Unlike most studies of stroke patients' linguistic competence, which examine subjects in isolation and in clinical settings, these interviews were conducted in the patients' homes, with the patients' spouses present in all of the interviews. The analysis concerns the ways 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 happened during the stroke proper. The spouses' participation in these stories 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 interactional patterns that make up the stroke patients' dearth of agency in these tellings, compare the interactional dynamics in the interviews with 'control' patients, and discuss the significance of these interactional minutiae for the patients' well-being and also for sociological investigations of 'the brain' and related issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neurolinguistic studies of language processing in aphasic patients have traditionally analyzed phonology, syntax, and lexico-semantics. We report, using home interviews as a major source of speech data, preliminary sociolinguistic observations of conversations between aphasic patients, their spouses, and an investigator. Examination of illocutionary force, the conversational strategies used to maintain discourse, and the cultural integration of speech deficits shows that sociolinguistic fluency may be obtained in spite of phonological, lexico-semantic, and/or syntactic dysfunction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]