298 Chapter Thirteen
ways of executing family planning in the past. The other means of
criticizing family planning by the leader is arguing against western
lifestyle and its imitation by Iranian families. Negative presentation of
western lifestyle is non-metaphorically founded on highlighting allegedly
dire consequences of family planning in the West. Such a conceptualization
typifies westerners as “different, distant, or deviant relative to the norms
and expectations” (Coupland 2010: 245) of the social group the leader
belongs to.
Positive conceptualization of the new plan by the leader is carried out
by admiring the role of ‘housewife’ and seeing it as the main career of
women. The use of religiously loaded words, such as mojâhedat ‘sacrifice’
to appreciate the decision to increase the number of children is a further
strategy to encourage Iranian couples. Contribution of large families to the
country’s social and economic progress is the other assumedly positive
point which the leader emphasizes in order to call attentions to the broader
aim for which the plan has been devised.
Similar to the leader, Ahmadinejad’s criticism of family planning and
its supporters draws upon negative representation of western lifestyle and
the negative outcomes of performing family planning in the West.
Overstating the consequences of family planning (that family planning
will lead to the extinction of Iranian identity) is another linguistic tool he
makes use of in order to warn Iranians. The extinction of Iranian identity
as a threat may also be inferred from the DISEASE metaphor which the
leader applied for the same purpose. Ahmadinejad’s use of the simile
POPULATION IS PEAS AND BEANS, while referring to the simplistic nature of
the analyses made by family planning supporters, alludes to the
impossibility of finding solutions for saving the nation (‘population cannot
be bought or imported’) once the low-population crisis reaches to a certain
level. ‘Impossibility to find a solution to save an aged society’ is also one
of the entailments of the disease metaphor in the leader’s speech (‘curing
the disease will not be possible’). In addition, Ahmadinejad accuses family
planning supporters of overpowering God and defying His orders (‘they
have taken the place of God’) in order to demonstrate the secular
perspective underlying the family planning policy. Furthermore, the
inefficiency of old people is metonymically and metaphorically referred to
via AGE FOR CAPABILITY and POPULATION IS A PERSON, which function to
ameliorate the offensive overtones of referring to senior citizens and their
efficiency in society.
Some source domains suggest shared values between the speaker and
certain social groups and hence promote intimacy (Koller 2004). The
conventional metaphor GOD IS THE NOURISHER is one of the key metaphors