Perche’ le parole fanno male? Considerazioni pragmalinguistiche sull’uso offensivo del linguaggio

Daily experience shows us that with words we can not only describe states of affairs, but also cause effects on somaticity: with words we can embrace and caress, but also hit and hurt. These are not only descriptive metaphors, but states of our body: we feel caressed, embraced, hit and hurt. Words act on our body, which is not only individual, but with the media it expands, becoming a social body constantly confronted with media storms of "excrement" (shitstorms) and "candystorms" (candystorms). So we ask ourselves: what allows language to go beyond mere representation (describe) and become a tool for the media to (inter)act acting on our individual and social body? And in particular: why can words hurt? What is the relationship between disparaging expressions and degree of offensiveness? What are the mechanisms that allow words to hurt?