Direct and Indirect Verbal and Bodily Insults and Other Forms of Aggressive Communication - Conflict and Multimodal Communication: Social Research and Machine Intelligence - page 252

13.5.5 Direct Criticism

Some sentences mention a flaw quite explicitly, for example, lei fa quello che Berlusconi e
Renzo gli dicono di far (she does what Renzi and Berlusconi tell her to do).

13.5.6 Indirect Criticism

A case of syntactic indirectness is: Questo movimento rappresenta viceversa l'unica
speranza degli italiani di poter cambiare uno governo e uno stato che li sta strangolando
(on the contrary, this movement is the only hope of Italians to change a government and a
state that is strangling them). That “the state is strangling Italians” is presupposed, so it is a
criticism embedded in the main sentence.
Examples of pragmatically indirect criticism are: Va i a l a v o r a re (go to work), which
implies you generally do not work; the ironic exclamation quanto è diventata affascinante
pure questa signora strappa lacrime (how charming has become this tearjerker lady); and
in the second person (directly addressed to her) suor boldrini (sister boldrini): an ironic
allusion to her being quite moralistic and struggling for political correctness.

13.5.7 Aggressive Request and Aggressive Prohibition

Another type of aggressive communication in our corpus comprises aggressive requests to
Boldrini or other politicians, generally in the second person, like A casa la BOLDRINI !
!!!!!!!!!!!! (BOLDRINI home!!!!), boldrini dimissioni (boldrini resign), fuori dai
coglioni (begone!).
The aggressive request is an imperative communicative act ordering the other to do
something that is bad for him/her and has as its opposite - though rare - case the aggressive
prohibition: forbidding the other to do something, as in non rompere i maroni (don't bother).

13.5.8 Aggressive Instigation

Aggressive instigation is a communicative act by which the sender incites the audience to
do something bad to the target. Examples from our corpus include the following: Spaccateli
tutti a sti bastardi !! (break them, all these bastards!!); a calci nel culo dobbiamo prenderli
(we must kick them in the ass); mandatela a zappare in sud africa insieme al suo amico
presidente (send her to hoe in South Africa together with her friend the president); and,
more creatively: rompile gli orecchini (break her earrings).

13.5.9 Curse

Finally, our corpus also contains curses: from fast and classical ones like Maledetto!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!Giorgio!!!!!!!!!! (curse on Giorgio D Giorgio Napolitano, the Italian