The resemioticisation of the socio-cultural construct of Nowruz festival in Tehran’s “Fatemi Spring” billboards

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study explores how the socio-cultural aspects of Nowruz are resemiotised to represent, orient and organize ideological constructs in Tehran’s “Fatemi Spring” billboards. These billboards are semiotic constructs with mixed messages about the coincidence of the Iranian new year festival of Nowruz at the beginning of spring and the Shia religious mourning on the occasion of the passing away of the holy prophet’s daughter Fateme, known as the Fatemiye period. Based on an integrated social semiotics approach, the study draws on multimodal analysis to elucidate the way semiotic resources are used for ideological transition within this discursive context. Quantitative enquiry methods are applied to illuminate the meaning construction processes shaped by the research corpus. The results show that in the generic discourse of Fatemi Spring billboards, the elements of Fatemiye mourning that belong to Shia beliefs are mostly preferred and the natural elements of spring are replaced by the Nowruz celebration rituals. Thus, people in power (billboard designers) appear to apply these ideological structures as a means to exercise discursive control over Tehran citizens.