Analysis of Baby-Boom Promoting Billboards in Iran
281CHILD IS LIGHT metaphor. Based on the metaphor, children are considered
the most important aspect or result of married life.
Another idiom that has traditionally acted as a psychological facilitator
of making more children, irrespective of the financial conditions of a
couple, is ânke dandân dahad, nân dahad ‘the one who gives teeth, gives
bread’. The idiom encourages couples to not be worried about the expense
of raising more children, because God is the one who nourishes and takes
care of His servants. Some people may even justify unwanted pregnancies
by seeing them as a sign of ‘God’s will’ and hence each baby that is given
birth to is taken as a ‘God’s blessing’. The meaning conveyed by the idiom
is that a child’s birth does not take place haphazardly or thoughtlessly;
rather, for each child born and for their future life on earth, the grounds
have already been provided by God. Dandân ’tooth’ metonymically refers
to the inherent physical capabilities that are born with humans for
functioning efficiently in the world. Nân ‘bread’ on the other hand,
through the same conceptual process, refers to all resources in the outside
world that can be used by humans by virtue of their inherent physical
capabilities. The conceptual relationship between tooth and bread provides
sufficient rationale to procreate fearlessly.
The aforementioned concepts may be seen as the cultural basis for
categorizing the proponents and opponents of the population increase
policy. However, in the analysis of the discourses and billboards related to
the procreation promotion scheme, I focus on the advocates’ view points
and the cognitive mechanisms that they exploit for persuading the public.
In this section, I analyze Iranian officials’ remarks regarding the
significance of having a large family and the way they conceptualize the
pros and cons of both the previous and the current plan. In addition, the
analysis seeks to shed light on the specific ways through which dominant
political ideology is launched and represented in political discourse, which
in turn provides a basis to discover the degree of consistency between
political conceptualizations and the conceptual contents of the billboards.
The supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, on several occasions warned
Iranian authorities of the ‘danger’ of becoming an aged and inefficient
society (www.Khamenei.ir 10/10/2012, 01/05/2013, 10/12/2013) and
urged the organizations in charge to find viable solutions to encourage
Iranian couples to procreate. In his speeches on the topic, the DISEASE
metaphor seems to be a major means of criticizing the family planning
policy: