Analysis of Baby-Boom Promoting Billboards in Iran
291Figure 2. An Iranian young boy carrying some senior citizens by couch bike.
Figure 3 shows two radically different types of Iranian couples in an
imaginary 30 year period. The slogan at the top of the picture reads: ‘More
Children, A Better Life’ whose comparative adjectives rhyme in Persian:
bishtar ‘more’ / behtar ‘better’. In the top left hand picture, a religious
young couple is dreaming excitedly of having a lot of children (four) in
their future life, and the neighboring picture depicts their life in the next 30
years; they have become old but they are still living happily with their
children and grandchildren around.
In the lower right hand picture, a modern (seemingly non-religious)
couple is angrily arguing over having a child and the woman disagrees; the
adjacent picture shows the fate of that life style, a lonely man with no wife
or children with only a dog as a friend. First of all, the target meaning,
HAVING MANY CHILDREN, is both linguistically and pictorially realized.
Islamic ideology concerning marriage and procreation prompts the
application of the ISLAMIC LIFESTYLE FOR IDEAL LIFESTYLE conceptual
metonymy. Elements of the source concept in the metonymy such as a
man growing a beard and wearing modest clothes, a woman wearing a
chador (a kind of Islamic dress), and having a lot of children are realized
and given prominence to in the upper right hand picture. The result of
adopting the Islamic lifestyle is a prolonged happiness, exemplified in
faces of three generations of a family, motivated by the RESULT FOR
ACTION metonymy.