The Rhetorical Functions of Adjectives in Qeysar Aminpour’s Poetry Based on Robert Dixon’s Semantic Model

Adjective is one of the three main elements of language that play a significant part in producing and conveying textual meaning. Robert Dixon, a contemporary English linguist, has provided a semantic typology of adjectives that consists of thirteen types. Adopting a descriptive-analytic methodology, the present study investigates the semantic and rhetorical functions of adjectives in the collected poems of Qeysar Aminpour according to Dixon’s model to see how the use of adjectives in the poems is related to the evolution of the poet’s attitudes. The findings of this research show that, apart from their primary semantic functions, adjectives and adjectival phrases play various significant aesthetic and rhetorical roles in Aminpour’s poems in creating music, poetic imagery, and such tropes as metaphor, simile, pun, allusion, and synaesthesia. It is also demonstrated that throughout Aminpour’s poetic career the frequency and functions of adjectives noticeably changed in accordance with significant changes in his attitudes toward both poetry and society. According to the data collected and analyzed in this study, four types of adjectives, i.e., speed, similarity, difficulty, and age, do not serve any rhetorical function in his poems, whereas the highest number of rhetorical functions is fulfilled by adjectives of physical properties, color, human propensity, and quality. Moreover, in terms of usage of adjectives and the number of their rhetorical functions the two volumes entitled “Sudden Mirrors” and “All Flowers Are Sunflowers,” written in the middle of his poetic career, are richer than the other two volumes of his poetry and the higher rate of using synaesthesia and pun in them signals the poet’s introversion and romantic mood in that stage. On the other hand, the higher number of adjectives of color and value in his first volume of poetry (“The Morning’s Breath”) accords with the poet’s mood during the Iran-Iraq War.