Direct and Indirect Verbal and Bodily Insults and Other Forms of Aggressive Communication - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 238

former, a single signal has the meaning of both performative and propositional
content, as with interjections in verbal languages (Poggi 2009 ) (e.g., “ wow! ” which
means “I inform you I am pleasantly surprised with this event”), but also as
“holophrastic” bodily signals (the gesture palm down with fingers bending down
for “please come here”). In the latter, the whole meaning is fragmented into lexical
items: a sentence resulting from the combination of words.
A distinction can be made between communication and expression based on the
level of intentionality and awareness of the signal and on the type of meaning
conveyed (Poggi 2004 , 2005 ): in communication the sender has an individual
conscious goal of providing some information that may concern the world or the
sender's mind or identity; in bare expression , in contrast, the goal of communicating
is a biological, social, or unconscious goal, and the information conveyed concerns
the sender's mind (e.g., level of certainty of conveyed information or emotions
being felt). Thus, while an aware expression of indignation is communicative ,an
involuntary blush of shame, a person's regional accent, or an eyebrow raised in
emphasis are expressive signals. Moreover, if an emotion leaks from our posture,
voice, or facial expression, not because we deliberately want to communicate it but
because we simply “give vent” to it, this is a “nonsocial,” “noncommunicative”
signal, hence only expression - not a full-blown communication - of emotions
(Poggi 2004 , 2005 , 2009 ).
Any verbal or bodily communicative act necessarily has a literal meaning, the one
drawn from its lexicon and (for verbal acts) syntax, but it may also have an indirect
meaning that the sender wants the addressee to catch by inference. For example, the
indirect meaning of a question may be a criticism, one of a sad facial expression, an
apology.

13.3 Insults and Other Types of Aggressive Communication

The world of aggressive communication is manifold. People may hurt each other by
whole sentences or discourses, single words uttered here and there, or by gestures,
posture, and gaze. What is hurt by these communicative weapons are not parts of
our body but recesses of our soul. We are wounded by others' hate, contempt, and
indifference, and what is wounded is our deepest self.
Insults are but one example of aggressive communicative action and is dis-
tinguished from other ways of hitting others in communication, with which they
insults are often combined. They are easily confused with curses, imprecations, and
bad words, which, though being in some way aggressive, may stem from different
emotions, arise from different antecedents, and carry a peculiar type of blow in
social interaction.
According to the foregoing sociocognitive model, these forms of aggressive
communicative action differ from two points of view:

1. Pragmatic structure