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Crisis and Language in Ray Bradbury’s The Last Night of the World

Abstract Language use in social crisis situations is usually described as being highly ideological, and it exhibits features of affect involving the use of negative evaluation of the perceived social enemies. The present study aims to explore the characters’ language use in Ray Bradbury’s short story entitled The Last Night of the World from a pragma-stylistic perspective. The fictional dialogue that takes place between the two protagonists creates and reflects the dynamics between them, where the unspeakable is only inferred rather than communicated. The analysis reveals special features of verbal communication in a crisis situation, especially focusing on the lexical and morphosyntactic properties, as well as on the verbal interaction and cooperation between the characters revealing their alignment. The results of the analysis prove that the verbal and non-verbal communication between the protagonists do not show the features described in crisis communication; therefore, the text of the story can be interpreted as subverting the generic language use in a critical situation.