Throwing down the gauntlet?

Sometimes people interpret requests and observations by others as aggressive actions, even when the putative agressor is merely asking a question or making an observation, such as "that doesn't seem like the world's best idea."

I'm not sure how this works, exactly, although I do recognize that in cases where people have been married for 40 years and one person has hypertension and just returned from having a triple bypass, "Pass the salt" becomes a declaration of war or possibly suicide. Deborah Tannen, the best-selling author and linguist, has published a number of books in which she discusses similar phenomena, which she terms "metamessaging," which is closely related to the "connection-control continuum." I see the ensuing fight as between the sides of "I strongly prefer that you don't die," and "You're not the boss of me."