“Those were not welcome days. We buried sons, brothers, mothers, fathers, fiancés…What once was whole, now was shattered” (McGinty, 2006). We Are Marshall is a film based on the true story of a deadly plane crash in 1970 that killed seventy-five football players, coaches, and fans of Marshall University (McGinty, 2006). Furthermore, the story follows how a new coach is able to rebuild a football team, as well as a community stricken with grief. The characters in this movie exhibit various interpersonal communication concepts, such as self-concept, convergence, divergence, debilitative, and facilitative emotions, and portray these concepts through their thoughts and actions. Assistant Coach Red Dawson exhibits how a character’s self-concept, …show more content…
On the other hand, divergence is defined as “communicators who want to set themselves apart from others” (Adler, 2005, p.182). In We Are Marshall, Coach Lengyel uses divergence when he communicates with others. He speaks to other characters using obscure stories that are not clear until the end. For example, he asks the president of the college to get the NCAA to permit freshmen to play. Lengyel says that just writing will not work, but tells the president he will actually have to go to Kansas City and meet with the board to receive approval. The president says it will not work and he cannot do it. Lengyel replies by telling a story about how the other day he was changing his sons diaper and cleaning him up. When his wife got home he told her what happened and she could not believe it. He replied by saying, "I know, the kid's four, he shouldn't be doing that anymore” (McGinty, 2006). She said, ”No, not that, I can't believe after all these years you finally changed a diaper” (McGinty, 2006). He concludes the story by saying, “There is a first time for everything” (McGinty, 2006). Lengyel communicates in a divergent way because his messages are different than what people are accustomed to hearing and his words have a way of standing