The Explanation of Bird Motif on Iranian Ashura Posters with Approach of Roman Jakobson’s Theory (The 80 and 90s SH)

One of the themes that artists have always used as the basis for the creation of their works of art is the historical epic of Ashura. When placed at the forefront of religious concepts such as Ashura, the representation also uses signs, codes, and communication signs to express its meanings. Ashura has valuable messages with it, the effects of which are still present in the culture and art of our land even after centuries. Today, a large number of Ashura representations are being made in Iran in the form of exhibitions and mourning ceremonies. This research tries to point to the subject of Ashura. Its main purpose is to identify the bird motifs and their symbolic use in the Ashura representation in Iran in the 2000s and 2010s as well as explaining the characteristics of bird symbolism and analyzing their literary variants, along with other visual elements of these representations with Jacobsen's approach. The following question arises: considering the Jacobsen’s approach in semiotics how does the role of the bird work in communication, metaphor, and trope, and what does it have to do with literary genres? The present study is based on the analysis of color, shape, composition and representation of the motifs of birds in relation to visual elements. The necessity of conducting this research is to study and recognize the communicative functions of Ashura representations and the role of birds in them. The evaluation has been done with the Jacobsen’s approach in order to address the impact of these representations and the way to convey the message through a variety of methods such as metaphor, trope, and to convey the meaning using various figures of speech.
Jacobsen believes that metaphor and probe are the two fundamental characteristics to convey the meaning. According to him, the formation of a discourse takes place in two different semantic ways. One issue may be followed by another, depending on the similarity or by proximity. A representation itself is a type of communicative language used to convey a message in order to communicate with audience in a visual communication. For this reason, Roman Jacobsen's communicative approach to functionality and expression of metaphor and probe was used to place symbols and determine the syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations, so that the theory could be used as a visual communicational channel. This insight should be a guide for artists, so that they can better convey the message with visual knowledge and communicative semiotics, and make visual impact more engaging.
This research is conducted based on descriptive-analytical and fundamental descriptive methods. The method of collecting information is library method. This method has been used by scanning images and taking notes, and the information has been qualitatively analyzed and processed. The statistical population of this study is 44 examples of Ashura representations that were designed and selected for Ashura art exhibitions in Iran during the 2000s and 2010s.
Jacobsen's communicative functions include six communicative functions of persuasive, metalingual, motivational, emotional, aesthetic or literary, and referential. Among them, four were related to the communicational field of Ashura representations as a visual communicational channel.
According to the research findings, many of the representations in which the motif of the bird has been used are derived from ritual and traditional arts, including the motif of birds on "banner" and "led horse", Coffee house paintings, paintings, lithographs, and so on. In general, according to the research, the epic of Ashura has attracted a lot of attention among the people since the 2010s and more representations have been designed on this issue. There have even been many mourning ceremonies in the last decade and Ashura movement has created various artistic fields. Since the 2010s, the motif of birds has become more prominent in selected representations, especially in mourning regarding the Ashura art. The pigeon symbol is more visible than any other bird, and even in some representations, the feathers and the concept of flight have been repeatedly used.
in both decades, the use of metaphor is more than probe. Some representations have both aspects of metaphor and probe, and some do not follow any of them. Emotional function is more notable than other communicational functions in these decades. In the 2010s, representations were less metaphorical in terms of practical impact than in the 2000s, but their emotional function was greater than in the 2000s. In general, persuasive function has the least communicational effect on message transmission, and emotional function has the most effect on representations. The persuasive and referential functions are more pronounced in the 2000s than in the 2010s, but the epic and action-packed approach of the 2000s representations is more explicit than the 2010s. It seems that forcing the audience to react (motivate) and meditate has been more important than other approaches for the designer.