290 Chapter Thirteen
implicates that the ideal age of marriage is in the teenage years, which has
also been recommended by the supreme leader in his public speeches. He
states that young men should marry at the age of 17 or 18 to meet their
sexual needs in a legitimate and Islamic way (www.khamenei.ir 30/10/
2013). This aspect of Islamic ideology concerning marriage is manifested
pictorially via IDEAL MEMBERS OF CATEGORY FOR CATEGORY metonymy.
Figure 2 presents a young sweating boy who is taking some old men
and women on a steep road by couch bike. The slogan on the top reads:
‘Younger Society, A Better Life’. The comparative adjectives used in the
slogan rhyme in Persian: javântar ‘younger / behtar ‘better’. The target
meaning, HAVING MORE CHILDREN, is neither linguistically nor visually
represented. However, its necessity is linguistically implicated via RESULT
FOR ACTION metonymy on the basis of which making more children results
in having a younger society. The billboard attempts to warn Iranian
couples who insist on having only one or two children; that is, the same
RESULT FOR ACTION metonymy operates to show that the direct
consequence of small families is an old, inefficient society. The negative
consequences of such a policy are metonymically manifested based on the
generic PROGRESS IS MOVING FORWARD metaphor; the steep road
conceptually corresponds to the difficulties and slow speed of the
progress, the peddling young boy corresponds to the work force needed for
progress, and the group of old people (as impediments to a rapid progress,
leading to the SENIOR CITIZENS ARE IMPEDIMENTS TO PROGRESS metaphor)
define the large number of old people in society who obviously outnumber
the young as a result of family planning. The pictorial manifestation of old
people depicts them as inefficient or useless citizens whose existence for
the society is costly. The young boy’s sweating face clearly shows the
huge responsibility that the young must accept in an aging society. This
interpretation is further reinforced by the exaggerated pictorial realization
of oldness: FACE WRINKLES, BEING HUNCHBACK are prototypical features
of oldness which are activated through SALIENT MEMBERS OF CATEGORY
FOR CATEGORY metonymy. Therefore, the billboard communicates the
idea that the only way to save the country from social-economic stagnation
is to have more children. This billboard focuses on the societal outcomes
of restricting the population. It can also be noticed that no religious
concept has been used in the picture which might mean that the poster may
have been designed to catch the attention of the educated category of
Iranians who might not be persuaded by religious-based reasoning or need
a strong scientific proof to side with the argument. The procreation
promotion is only metonymically interpreted and is not explicitly realized
in the billboard.