ABSTRACT
Growing up surrounded by stories, we do not always appreciate the important role they play in our personal and social lives. Stories have the capacity to portray and sustain personal experiences, desires, fears, values, and identities. By the same token, stories can be seen as central to the formation of a group and the creation of a shared identity and can also be credited with nurturing the beauty of traditions and culture. In equal measure, however, stories can be held culpable of perpetuating inequality, discrimination, racism, chauvinism, and other wrongs committed by groups. In fact, stories capture, maintain, and transfer much of human culture, or even, as some claim, are responsible for the very creation of society (e.g., Carr 1986). As such, they are “essential in the maintenance and legitimating of dominant power and ideologies” (van Dijk 1993a: 125).
