This post and some of the comments seem to me to have got the wrong end of the stick. Sometimes offense is used as a rhetorical trick, in which case notions of 'high status response' and 'manipulation' are appropriate. However it normally occurs when one person - from callousness or ignorance - says or does something that does not accord another person's the respect and dignity they are entitled to.

These aren't so much a dichotomy as they are different descriptions of the same phenenemon said from the perspective of a (hypothetical) ally instead of a rival.