A Rhetorical Analysis Of 12 Angry Men

This movie shows how groups vary in communication skills. Larger groups tend to have a more complex way of communicating. Members in larger groups usually have less opportunities to voice their thoughts and opinions. Throughout this movie I observed how a group of jurors, 12 men, communicated with each other to determine the fate of an 18 year old accused young man. This movie perfectly portrayed the different stages of group development: forming, storming, norming, and performing. In the beginning of the movie the 12 men are taken into a room where all of them must find a way to communicate with each other proficiently in order to come up with an agreement on the young man’s fate. At first the men are unsure of who should take charge and some even seem uncomfortable with each other. The men proceeded into small talk while others began to make awkward jokes while they waited for someone to take charge. Once one of the men …show more content…
Later throughout the movie groupthinking becomes less and less common as everyone else starts to make realizations and thinking outside of the box to prove the young man’s innocence. However there were some norms formed throughout this movie. One of the norms established by the group was that at first eleven out of the twelve men followed the popular belief that the accused was guilty. Another norm was how the eleven men expectedly fought Davis, because they strongly believed that they were right and he was wrong. They did not let him express his thoughts properly without insulting his way of thinking. Lastly, some of the men were being very rude, almost throughout the entire film, when trying to get their point across, which soon became expected of them; since it was always the same couple of men that were being very aggressive when expressing their