280 Chapter Thirteen
billboard designers have used. Positive and negative social stereotypes
about western lifestyle highlight the role of the SALIENT PROPERTIES FOR
CATEGORY as a conventional metonymy, which plays an important role in
constructing meanings which aim to contrast Iranian and western
lifestyles.
The other types of conceptual knowledge that can be considered as
having contextual influence in the creation of figurative meanings are:
knowledge about the main elements of the discourse (the speaker, hearer,
and topic), previous discourses relating to the topic of the ongoing
discourse, ideology, dominant forms of discourse in society, past events
and states, and participants’ interests and concerns (ibid: 53–56). This part
includes factors which, to a large extent, influence the construction of the
figurative meanings observed in the data. The discourse on family
planning policy, the negative attitude of Iranian top officials toward
western lifestyle and family planning, the negative attitudes of Iranian
families toward having more children, the cultural habit of expanding the
family size in the past, believing in divine support, all contribute to
constructing meanings that the communicators wish to get across to their
addresses (Iranian families):
(d) Bodily context: The body is involved in the formation of conceptual
metaphors by providing a large number of source domains. Moreover, it
can also influence the choice of metaphor locally, i.e. during the ongoing
discourse (ibid: 184). Neither body part terms nor the local body seems to
be involved in the formation of the figurative meanings analyzed.
Procreation promotion in culture and politics
Having a large family had been part of Iranian culture for a long time up to
the 1990’s when the government used a population restriction program.
Getting married for Iranians is necessarily associated with having children.
A short time after two people get married, they should prepare themselves
to face relatives, friends and even their own parents’ curiosity as to when
the couple is planning to have a child. In other words, having children may
not be a fully private matter for couples, and there exists a social
expectation according to which married life should bear ‘fruit’ in order to
be meaningful. The significance of having children in Iranian culture is
represented in the conventional idioms that characterize couples who can’t
have children due to physiological problems. Ojâgh kur ‘off-light’ is a
conventional way of referring to such couples. The idiom is based on the