چكيده لاتين
The significance of the population issue in various political and social realms necessitates in-depth studies on discourses. While previous research has addressed population-related topics, the examination of discourses on two different population policies (family planning and childbearing) has received less attention. What is crucial here is to see how these policies are articulated within official discourses such as newspaper articles, speeches, and news agencies to propagate specific ideologies regarding population policy objectives. In this study, a selective-integrative method (incorporating the social-cognitive approach of Van Dijk, role and systematic approach of Halliday, and other linguistic tools like nominalization, passivization, presupposition, etc.) based on critical discourse analysis is employed to analyze the desired data. Discourse data on family planning are extracted from newspapers like Ettelaʹat and Hamshahri, while childbearing discourse data are sourced from news agencies such as Islamic Republic, Mehr, and Tasnim, resulting in 47 selected samples for analysis. Different levels of discourse are examined and interpreted at both micro and macro dimensions (linguistic and discursive). Ideological discourses in family planning encompass issues such as population growth, hindering sustainable development, unemployment and poverty challenges, educational and environmental issues, urbanization problems, mental health concerns, and obstacles to proper governance. Similarly, ideological discourses in childbearing include population growth as a prerequisite for sustainable development, combating aging, Iranian-Islamic culture, countering enemy conspiracies, womenʹs societal contributions, better child upbringing, and preventing depression. The research findings indicate that at the micro level, the application of various linguistic strategies (metaphor, schemata, structure, presupposition, etc.) in both data was relatively similar. However, at the macro level, significantly different and contradictory ideological discourses have emerged. This highlights that the manner and process of discourse construction in shaping ideologies within each data category are more crucial than linguistic strategies alone. In other words, as Van Dijk (2005) suggests, linguistic strategies serve as tools for constructing ideological discourses, but the type of discourse construction in persuasive ideological discourse creation and representation plays a more fundamental role.
