ABSTRACT
In the wake of 9/11, the media were alive with survivors’ tales-stories that captured horrifying events and the fortitude of those who survived them. Like all stories, these would draw on common sense (“what any reasonable person would believe or feel or do in the same circumstance”1), but they would also speak to what it means to be an American. Storytelling, linguist Charlotte Linde tells us, can draw people together. It can “create group membership for [the speaker] and solidarity for [a] group.”2 Stories, by their nature, locate our very personal experiences within larger cultural norms and expectations. But for the televised narratives of September 11, the larger relevance was heavily constructed by reporters and the visual frames of the news media.
