The adjective and its stylistic functions

The only grammatical category of the Enghsh adjective today is that of comparison. Comparison is only the property of qualitative and quantitative adjectives, but not of the relative ones.

When adjectives that are not normally used in a comparative degree are used with this category they are charged with a strong expressive power.

Mrs. Thompson, Old Man Fellow's housekeeper had found him deader than a doornail... (Mangum)

This is a vivid example of a grammatical transposition of the second type built on the incongruity of the lexical and grammatical meanings.

In the following example the unexpected superlative adjective degree forms lend the sentence a certain rhythm and make it even more expressive:

...fifteen millions of workers, understood to be the strangest, the cun-ningest, the willingest our Earth ever had. (Skrebnev)

The commercial functional style makes a wide use of the violation of grammatical norms to captivate the reader's attention:

The orangemostest drink in the world.

The transposition of other parts of speech into the adjective creates stylistically marked pieces of description as in the following sentence:

A camouflage of general suffuse and dirty-jeaned drabness covers everybody and we merge into the background. (Marshall)

The use of comparative or superlative forms with other parts of speech may also convey a humorous colouring:

He was the most married man I've ever met. (Arnold)

Another stylistic aspect of the adjective comes to the fore when an adjective gets substantivized and acquires the qualities of a noun such as "solid, firm, tangible, hard," etc.

All Europe was in arms, and England would join. The impossible had happened. (Aldington)

The stylistic function of the adjective is achieved through the deviant use of the degrees of comparison that results mostly in grammatical metaphors of the second type (lexical and grammatical incongruity).

The same effect is also caused by the substantivized use of the adjectives.

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