| Summary: | Our research has defined severe verbal abuse as built up tension characterized by directly threatening acts (such as provocation, threats, insults), and polemical violence as argumentative discourse which mobilizes indirect discursive devices, such as implicit discourse relations and irony. Yet, neither type of discourse can be considered to be impervious to mutual influence. Based on the content of an educational DVD featuring acted out scenes of daily verbal abuse taking place in public and institutional spaces (i.e., checks, summons, fines), we will show how specific argumentative devices, which we will describe, are very efficiently used within interactions that are characterised by severe abuse, with the aim of destabilizing and taking control over somebody.
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