Direct and Indirect Verbal and Bodily Insults and Other Forms of Aggressive Communication - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 251

mondiale ! ! ! D boldrini you are a world disgrace!!!), without the copula ( boldrini
schifo ! D Boldrini suck!; peste bubbonica ! ! D pest!!, Black Death!!; cagna cagna
cagna D bitch bitch bitch), “Name C adjective” ( Boldrini, serva dei potenti e nemica degli
italiani D Boldrini, servant of the masters and enemy of Italians), or, finally, the vocative
( a marcionaaaaaaa D oh you big rotten). This last one is a “creative” insult, in that
“marciona” (big rotten woman) is a neologism. Other less classical but similar forms
are: “insulting adjective C Name” ( cretina boldrini D stupid boldrini), “insulting verb” ( fai
schifo ! ! D you suck!!), or finally an insulting verb in the form of exclamatory sentence
( Che pena che fai D how I pity you).

13.5.2 Direct Insult to Third Person (Addressee D Audience)

In some sentences the insulting adjective or noun is assigned to the target as a third
person, as if referring to her while addressing the audience: Boldini VERGOGNOSA
(Boldini shameful), la boldrini è una nullità (boldrini is a nothing), codesta umanoide (this
humanoid), zarina stalinista di merda (Stalinist Czarina shit).
In one case, the insult is also argued: la boldrini è una zozzona quando parla di
lampedusa si eccita pensa al c dei suoi amici immigrati africani D boldrini is a dirty woman
when she talks about lampedusa (a Mediterranean island where many refugees end up) she
gets excited she thinks of the c ::: . of her African immigrant friends).

13.5.3 Indirect Insult: Syntactic Indirectness

As stated earlier, in some cases the insulting word or phrase is present but only presupposed
and not asserted, for example, QUESTI PEZZENTI VOGLIONO LA GUERRA ! (These
beggars want war!); li dobbiamo mandare tutti a casa sti porci (we must send all of them
home, these pigs ). These insults are all in the third person (addressee D audience), which
is, in a sense, one more reason to consider them indirect.

13.5.4 Indirect Insult: Pragmatic Indirectness

In other cases, the insulting meaning is not simply presupposed but must be inferred by
making reference to rhetorical devices like reticence, insinuation, rhetorical question, or
irony. Vorrei sapere a quale ruolo è adatta la boldrini (I would like to know what role
boldrini is good for) lets you infer a total lack of skills; mi viene uno strano istinto quando
vedo la faccia della boldrini (I feel a strange instinct as I see boldrini's face) implies a
nonverbal insult: the desire to spit in her face.
While in these cases the addressee is the audience, in what follows the indirect insult
is in the second person: boldrini vieni a pescare con noi ci manca il verme (boldrini come
fishing with us: we are out of worms). Finally, the very fact of not writing Boldrini's name
with the capital letter is a way to let you infer disrespect - another kind of indirect insult.
Other cases of aggressive communication in our corpus include direct and
indirect criticism.