This book represents the first attempt to provide a systematic theoretical account of verbal aggressiveness from a linguistic pragmatic perspective. It describes the (para)linguistic means used in English to be aggressive and combines research on aggressive behaviour carried out in the field of social psychology with the tenets of speech act theory and prototype theory to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon as distinct from impoliteness. By challenging current (anglocentric) views on aggressiveness that tend to equate it with impoliteness, this study opens up a new perspective on verbal aggressiveness as a phenomenon worth being investigated in its own right.