ABSTRACT

Aggressive communication is a unique phenomenon that has attracted much attention from researchers in the United States during the last few decades. Scholarly research into symbolic aggressive communication in the discipline of communication studies has reached several milestones and represents one of the most productive lines of research. For example, Infante (1987) conceived a framework that classifies symbolic aggressive communication into two categories: constructive and destructive. Infante and Rancer (1982) and Infante and Wigley (1986) developed two scales, the “Argumentativeness (ARG) Scale” and the “Verbal Aggressiveness Scale (VAS),” respectively. These scales assess the two traits of aggressive communication. Guided by the framework that based verbal aggressiveness in hostility and argumentativeness in assertiveness, researchers have conducted scores of studies devoted to help understand aggressive communication in various contexts and social situations (Rancer & Avtgis, 2006).