EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY IN OCEAN VUONG’S WORKS: A LINGUISTIC APPROACH
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24919/2522-4565.2025.61.21Keywords:
emotional vulnerability, linguistic techniques, Ocean Vuong, character development, metaphoric vulnerabilityAbstract
The article analyzes emotional vulnerability in Ocean Vuong’s work, particularly On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and Night Sky with Exit Wounds, from a linguistic perspective. It examines Vuong’s use of adjectives and how they contribute to emotional complexity. The study further delineates four particular types of adjectives that enhance its arc: the emotive, the metonymic, the temporal and the embodied, and details how they amplify the fragility and instability of Vuong’s characters. Vuong’s choice of descriptors generates and escalates lexical tension by stacking the gentler with the more violent («tender» and «crushed flowers»), thereby revealing how fragile human connections are.The metonymic adjectives by applying a sensory quality to an abstract noun, deepen the emotional strata of the text. The description of memory as «bruised but persistent» creates physical vulnerability, whereas temporal adjectives like «fleeting» portray the ephemerality of beauty, love, and life. Vuong’s embodied adjectives like «raw» and «mottled» anchor abstract emotions in their physical sensations, producing an emotional landscape that is vivid and tactile. This method of referencing communicates existential vulnerability and the instability of marginalized identities in larger cultural contexts.The research is based on linguistic, literary, and other theories, including those of Halliday, Jakobson, and Lakoff, to show how the adjectives in Vuong’s language together create emotional microclimates, as it is all used together: clouds of feeling. The study finds that the interplay of emotional states and external pressures shapes emotional experience through linguistic choices, highlighting their impact on the portrayal of vulnerability.The findings add to broader conversations around themes of vulnerability and marginalization in literature by examining how Vuong’s use of language communicates the fleetingness, fragility, and persistence of the human spirit.
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