Rhetorical-social analysis of the images of the poem "Meh", by Ahmad Shamlou based on the model of Fairclough

The focus of this interdisciplinary research is the coordinates (how and why) of the images in the poem "Meh", by Ahmed Shamlou, in relation to intratextual and extratextual variables. The main purpose of the article is the analysis of rhetorical-social images of this poem. Norman Fairclough's theory of critical discourse analysis was used to realize both aims. The rhetorical aspects of the images, the situational context of the images, and the socio-political dimensions (macrotexture) of the images were analyzed respectively at the levels of description, interpretation, and explanation. According to Fairclough's method, attention should be paid to the texture, dimensions and ideological function of the images at all levels. “Meh”s has a symbolic structure and its images include similes, metaphors, synesthesia, ironies and ambiguity. The poem, represents the situation of a desert-sea in a "foggy night". There are two dominant images in the poem; One compares Iran's suspended political-social situation after the 1953 coup to night, and the other likens the society caught in this situation to a desert/sea that is not yet dead and hopes for the emergence of positive changes. The big picture of the poem is the closed and unclear political-social space of Iran, which is represented in the symbol of the foggy night and the desert-like sea. The situational context of the images includes "the connection with the textual context of the discourse, the time and reality coordinates affecting the composition and depiction of the poem, and the political and social situational context". The ideological function of the images is to denaturalize the political state of society and the ruling discourse while naturalizing the discourse of struggle and resistance. The subject of this poem is the social and political situation of Iran in the early 30s from the perspective of revolutionary intellectuals, which was created due to the conflict between internal and external political and social forces and left the society in an uncertain state from improvement to deterioration.