Linguistic and emotional processing of verbal aggression

Abstract

Verbal aggression is a form of violence exerted through language, generating emotional damage. As such, there is a need for greater understanding of the affective and cognitive processes involved in comprehending linguistic expressions considered as aggression. The objective of this article is to offer an overview of existing knowledge concerning the processing of emotional expressions, in particular of verbal aggression. The affective language comprehension model (ALC; van Berkum, 2018) considers emotions to be a fundamental factor in comprehension. Using the ALC as a frame of reference, we review experimental and self-report studies of psychology, psycholinguistics, and interpersonal communication. The linguistic and extralinguistic factors found to influence the emotional processing of language were the emotional value of the words, linguistic context, link between sender and receiver, content of the aggression, use of sarcasm, perceived intention, present audience, and belief system of the receiver. The evidence indicates that the emotional consequences of verbal aggression can be explained by the aforementioned factors. Finally, we identify unexplored factors that could influence emotional damage and which should be addressed in future work.