ISSN: 2320-5407 Int. J. Adv. Res. 5(4), 1664-1668 1664 Journal Homepage: -www.journalijar.com Article DOI:10.21474/IJAR01/3995 DOI URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.21474/IJAR01/3995 RESEARCH ARTICLE A STYLISTIC STUDY OF THE USE OF ADJECTIVES IN SHAPIRO'S ”AUTO WRECK“ Dr. Hoshang Farooq Jawad¹ and Dr. Mukhalad Malik Yosif². 1. Professor Assistant- Department of English- Faculty of Basic Education-Sulaimaniya University. 2. Lecturer- Department of English- Cihan University- Sulaimaniya. …………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Manuscript Info Abstract ……………………. ……………………………………………………………… Manuscript History Received: 18 February 2017 Final Accepted: 22 March 2017 Published: April 2017 Key words:- adjectives, semantic analysis, syntactic analysis, stylistics, The current study is an empirical investigation of the use of adjectives in the poem Auto Wreck by Karl Shapiro. The paper attempts at illustrating how adjectives are exploited by the poet so as to achieve various literary purposes including signifying the theme, depicting the main events and creating a sense of attraction and suspension in the readers' minds. The use of adjectives is significant in fulfilling such purposes clearly and efficiently. They represent the linguistic forms and the literary meaning to be conveyed throughout the entire poem. The paper reveals that using adjectives is a stylistic tendency used by Shapiro to achieve his literary purposes in showing the theme of the poem and to a large extent showing necessary and relevant details. Copy Right, IJAR, 2017,. All rights reserved. …………………………………………………………………………………………………….... Introduction:- Generally speaking, adjectives are words such as tall, round, happy, etc that describe nouns (persons or a thing) in sentences. In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun’s referent. Collectively, adjectives form one of the traditional English eight parts of speech though linguists today distinguish adjectives from words such as determiners that also used to be considered adjectives. The current paper aims at investigating the importance of this word category in poetic language as a stylistic marker which has a great role in achieving various literary purposes. The paper examines how adjectives are used in the poem 'Auto Wreck' by Karl Shapiro (published in 1968). The study is mainly concerned with the syntactic and semantic analysis of adjectives as exploited in the poem so as to relate it to the stylistic tendency that the poet uses to express the theme and depict the main literary devices used in the poem. The model of analysis to be relied on in this study is adopted form Leech and Short (1981). In general, the paper aims at relating the linguistic use of adjectives to the stylistic tendency which distinguishes the style of writer in this specific poem. Definitions of Adjectives:- Adjectives are characterized as expressions “that alter, clarify, or adjust the meaning contributions of nouns”, in order to allow for the expression of “finer gradations of meaning” than are possible through the use of nouns alone (Huddleston and Pullum 2002:526). According to Crystal (2008), adjectives which might be abbreviated as (A, adj, ADJ) belong to the grammatical category of words referring to the main set of items which specify the attributes of nouns from a formal point of view. Crystal states that the narrow and broad presentations of the term ''adjectives'' will be found in grammars. Generally speaking, an adjective could include everything between determiner and the noun, in such a phrase as the vicar’s fine oldgarden chair ; but many linguist s prefer to restrict it to the items which fulfill more or all of the above standards (to include only fine and old ), in this example, the other items being called’ ’adjective – like ’’ or ‘adjectives ’ (ibid). Radford et al. (2009) argue that adjectives typically refer to Corresponding Authors:-Dr. Hoshang Farooq Jawad., Dr. Mukhalad Malik Yosif Address:-Professor Assistant- Department of English- Faculty of Basic Education-Sulaimaniya University.