FOREGROUNDING OF HOPE AND RESILIENCE A STYLISTICS ANALYSIS OF ADA LIMÓN'S "INSTRUCTIONS ON NOT GIVING UP

Abstract

This research focuses on the way Ada Limón builds hope and resilience in "Instructions on Not Giving Up" (The Carrying, 2018) through the device of foregrounding. Utilizing Mukarovsky's (1964) foregrounding theory, Leech and Short's (2007) multi-level stylistic model, Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) conceptual metaphor model, as well as the reader-response research of Miall and Kuiken (1994), the paper offers a qualitative close reading of the entire composition. While Limón has garnered a great deal of critical attention, formal, peer-reviewed stylistic analyses of her poetry are few. They indicate that emotional force of the poem is linguistically enacted rather than thematically declared: register contrast, biological conceptual metaphor, accumulative syntax, and a colloquial volta collectively disintegrate romanticized models of hope and articulate a more hushed, prolonged representation of resilience.