Text, visuals and commitment in advertising

Text, visuals and commitment in advertising

Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Supervisors: Dr. R.J.U. Boogaart

Dr. R. Pilgram

2 Abstract

This study explores visual communication and discusses the concept of speaker commitment in advertising. Speaker commitment is broadly discussed within pragmatics, but often with a focus on written discourse. This paper analyses different advertisements and illustrates how people arrive at interpretations of advertisements with and without explicit text. Empirical research is conducted in order to see how people interpret images in advertising and to analyse what role text plays in this process. The study shows that text in many cases anchors the image and helps to understand the meaning behind it. However, images also often act independently and convey ideas not expressed by the verbal message. These ambiguous cases usually involve a complex discussion regarding speaker commitment. Nevertheless, the study reveals that the visual mode of communication can be very strong in conveying ideas and is often highly committal as well.

3 Contents

1. Introduction ... 5

2. Theoretical framework ... 8

2.1. Textual-visual relations ... 8

2.2. The importance of context when interpreting an image ... 15

2.3. Ambiguity in advertising: the role of written discourse ... 18

2.4. Weak versus strong message ... 20

2.5. Speaker/receiver commitment ... 23

3. Methodology ... 27

3.1. Method and materials ... 27

3.2. Analysis of data ... 31

4. Results. Individuals’ interpretations and speaker commitment ... 33

4.1. Advertisements with text being subordinate to image ... 33

4.1.1. Advertisement of Northway medical centre ... 33

4.1.2. Social anti-smoking advertisement ... 40

4.1.3. Telmisartan Sandoz advertisement ... 45

4.1.4. Organ donation advertisement ... 50

4.2. Advertisements with image and text having ‘equal complementary’ status ... 56

4.2.1. Elektromarkt advertisement ... 56

4.2.2. Innovation Computer Group advertisement ... 61

4.2.3. Lithuanian vodka advertisement ... 66

4.3. Advertisements with image and text having ‘equal independent’ status ... 71

4.3.1. A butcher’s shop advertisement ... 71

4.3.2. Ergo insurance advertisement ... 76

4.3.3. Tele2 advertisement ... 80

4.4. Comparison of results of all three categories ... 84

5. Discussion ... 86

6. Conclusion ... 92

Bibliography ... 93

4 Appendix A. Sources of the Lithuanian advertisements included in the study ... 95 Appendix B. Report of results (as imported from Qualtrics) ... 98

5 1. Introduction

Advertising forms a huge part of everyone’s daily life as we are surrounded by advertisements every day and everywhere. Growing consumerism and competition force advertisers to find

ways to attract peoples’ attention and convince (Wang, 2013). In order to do that, advertisers often attempt to use catchy visuals in combination with text.

Due to the enormous speed of new developments and especially the growth of information

technology, image and text often come together in advertising and create multimodal

communication. Nowadays there are many ways to easily design a desirable image, with a

possibility to manipulate its size, shape or colour. Moreover, a wider audience has access to

advertising and there is less effort needed to distribute it than ever before. Text and image

receive more and more attention among researchers as well (Martinec and Salway, 2005).

However, for a long time it was not acknowledged that an image in advertising might play a

major role and is not only a simple means to illustrate the verbal message (McQuarrie and

Mick, 1996).

The relationship between text and image is also scrutinised in this study. It is researched how

images and text interact in different advertisements and how they unite with each other in order

to create meaning. Consider the following Lithuanian advertisement, which represents the focal

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Picture 1. Advertisement of a butcher’s shop (In Simonavičė, 2014).

This advertisement depicts a woman holding a piece of meat and the text simply says ‘a butcher’s shop’. The Women’s Information Centre of Lithuania and Human Rights Monitoring Institute raised public awareness with their claim that this advertisement is derogatory since it

equates a woman’s body with meat. According to the spokesperson of the Women’s Information Centre, advertisement includes words ‘a butcher's shop’ and the image portrays a

woman with a piece of meat. In this way a consumer is faced with a decision to choose between

a woman’s body and a lump of meat (Fuks, 2014).

The creator of this highly controversial advertisement responded by highlighting that there is

no text in the advertisement, which suggests choosing between a woman and a piece of meat.

According to him, if someone interpreted the advertisement in that way, it is entirely their

problem. The only reason why the owner of the shop included the picture of a woman, as he

explains, is because he thought it looks beautiful (Fuks, 2014).

Therefore, this example illustrates the following issues in advertising: how varying are

individuals’ interpretations when a linguistic message is lacking in an advertisement? If there is no text to explain the visual, are we entitled to blame advertisers for our own interpretations

of controversial advertisements? To what extent can advertisers be held accountable for

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In this study an attempt is made to investigate the interplay between text and image in

advertising and to see how people form their interpretations depending on how informative the

text in an advertisement is. This study reveals if people can arrive at the same or similar

implicatures of an image even if text does not explicitly state the idea behind it. This paper tries

to explore if an image by itself can strongly communicate a certain idea. At the same time,

another concern is to look at speaker commitment in different advertisements in order to

discuss in which cases an advertiser could be held accountable for derived interpretations.

Thus, this paper tries to answer the following research questions:

1) To what extent does the range of respondents’ interpretations vary depending on the role of text in these advertisements?

2) In which cases are advertisers committed to interpretations that arise from advertisements?

This study is highly relevant as it explores text and image relations. The concept of

commitment is widely discussed within pragmatics (Mazzarella, 2018). However, the debate

mostly focused on various linguistic devices (Mazzarella, 2018, p. 16), but rarely on images or

combination of text and images, even though they are very common in advertising. The attempt

is made to see if images can be strong tool to convey ideas as well, besides verbal

communication. Thus, the study gives a better understanding of multimodal texts, their nature

and, importantly, it also provides some insights on the complex concept of speaker

commitment.

8 2. Theoretical framework

This chapter presents different text and image relations and explains the importance of context

and text when arriving at an interpretation of an advertisement. It also distinguishes between

weak and strong communication and shows why this distinction is crucial for the discussion of

speaker commitment.

2.1. Textual-visual relations

The study of verbal-visual relations was mostly inspired by Roland Barthes and his study

‘Rhetoric of the image’ (1977). Back then, he raised a fundamental question: how does an image carry meaning? In order to answer it, he focused on the analysis of the relationship

between text and visuals in advertising. Barthes emphasised the common phenomenon that in

the world of mass communication, every image is accompanied with a linguistic code. Every

picture has multiple meanings and the linguistic message is what helps us to choose the most

relevant one and reject all other meanings. Text in an advertisement helps to answer the

following question: “what does that image mean?” (Barthes, 1977). Therefore, in order to understand the intended meaning of an advertiser, the relation between text and image is vital

to consider.

Barthes (1997) stated that the linguistic message has two functions in relation to an image:

anchorage, where text supports an image and relay, where text and image reinforce each other

and, in this way, both help to arrive at a certain interpretation. On the other hand, an image can

function as illustration, where it supports text. According to Barthes, anchorage is the most

common function in advertising since it clarifies an image and guides a reader towards an

intended meaning. On the other hand, the relay function means that text contains some crucial

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later study oppose the proposed function scheme by Barthes in a way that, according to them,

visuals in advertising in many cases act independently. Sometimes the verbal part in an

advertisement carries the meaning, which is not reflected in an image. In this case both text

and image transmit their own separate ideas. The authors provide an example, where text is

non-sexist and provides a reader with some general information about a product, but an image

conveys some sexual stereotypes on its own (2006). This situation is also reflected in the

advertisement of a butcher’s shop described in the introduction. This claim by Kress and van Leeuwen is highly important in this thesis since individuals’ interpretations of precisely this kind of advertisement will be researched as well.

It is clear then that the status of text in relation to image in advertising differ. Martinec and

Salway (2005) also developed their own system of the interplay between the linguistic message

and visuals. The authors analysed encyclopaedias, advertisements, websites, textbooks and

other sources, where image and text appear together and based on that they constructed a

unified system of image and text relations.

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Figure 1. Different status of text and image (In Martinec and Salway, 2005, p. 349).

The verbal part of an advertisement and the image have an unequal status when one modifies

the other (the modifier dependent on the modified element). Verbal message and image in

combination create a dimension of meaning. For example, if text is subordinate to an image,

text acts as an explanation of that image:

Picture 2. Text subordination (In Martinec and Salway, 2005). Text here says: “... walks up the courthouse steps with his legal team in a recent photo”

Image here plays the main role and text explains what is depicted in that image by referring to

it.

When an image is subordinate to text, text is the main component and explicitly tells the whole

idea of an advertisement. Here text refers to a part of an image only. Image also does not have

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convey any message on its own and does not participate in creating a unified meaning in

combination with text. Consider the following poster:

Picture 3. Image subordination to text (In Martinec and Salway, 2005)

Here text is abundant as it gives out a lot of information about starfish. Thus, the intended

meaning is explicitly revealed with the help of the verbal message and images of starfish do

not conjure up any other meanings. Here the images simply illustrate the text and do not convey

any other additional information.

On the other hand, equal status of text and image can be either independent or complementary.

If the status is independent, there are no clues of one altering the other and, instead, image and

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Picture 4. Image-text independent (In Martinec and Salway, 2005)

In this example an independent image and text relationship is depicted. Text in this

advertisement simply presents the product, whilst the image has its own message. Text is not

there to explain the picture.

When modification occurs in an advertisement, but text and image have their own meanings,

the status is ‘equal complementary’. Here text or image complement each other, but they conjure up different ideas in a reader’s mind (Martinec and Salway, 2005). An example of ‘equal complementary’ status is presented later in this chapter.

From the diagram presented it is clear that Martinec and Salway (2005) combine Barthes’s (1977) and Kress van Leeuwen’s (2006) views on the different kinds of relationships between visuals and text. The authors include anchorage, illustration and relay functions from Barthes’s

theory, but also emphasise that image and text could act independently in case when they both

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Another point regarding text and image relations is that text subordination to an image often

results in appearance of implicit devices, which are necessary to be decoded by referring to that

image (Martinec and Salway, p.345):

Picture 5. Text subordination to an image (In Martinec and Salway, 2005, p. 346)

In this example we see that in order to decode text it is necessary to refer to an image as there

are many textual references to the image, such as this, the back, the work, the sitter, etc.

Even though text subordination can occur in advertising quite often, equal status of image and

text in advertising is the most common phenomenon, especially when an advertisement

contains an entertainment element. Images play a vital role in catching people’s attention and they are often meant to entertain. For this reason, images are in most cases indispensable in

advertising. When the status of image and text is equal, the connection between the two is

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Picture 6. Equal relations of text and image, image and text complementary (In Martinec and Salway, 2005, p. 345)

These two teddy bears, appearing on Alpen cereal boxes, are ‘cute, but naughty’. This

complements the text, which describes the taste of cereal ‘sweet but not too sweet’. We see from the example that text to some extent refers to an image and modifies it. However, even if

text and image have seemingly the same idea, they both refer to different things. In this case,

the status is ‘equal complementary’ (Martinec and Salway, 2005).

Given that image and text can represent implicit ideas, it is necessary to highlight that an

advertisement is often polysemous and does not have to suggest one single meaning. Certain

combinations of visuals and text might even contradict each other, thus there might be multiple

possible meanings and different individuals might arrive at different implicatures (Piazza and

Haarman, 2016). The same idea was discussed by Meinhof (1994) as well in his study of

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potential and a reader’s interpretation of it is one out of many possible interpretations. It is also emphasised that sometimes in news what we see and hear might differ considerably and in

these cases every individual might interpret the message in their own distinct way (1994).

Therefore, an interpretation of the potential idea an advertiser attempts to convey by

visual-verbal means can vary from an individual to an individual, since text in combination with an

image in advertising awakens abstract thinking (Wiggin and Miller, 2003). This issue of the

indeterminacy of interpretations is seen in the butcher’s shop advertisement presented in Chapter 1, where the advertiser is blamed for the interpretation, which he denies even having

in mind.

2.2. The importance of context when interpreting an image

Since this paper analyses interpretations of advertisements, it is necessary to highlight that

context is also crucial to take into account when making sense of an image (Piazza and

Haarman, 2016). Relevance theory developed by Sperber and Wilson is essential in this study

since it aims to explain the connection between context and meaning. Researchers Forceville

(2020) and Tanaka (1994) both suggest analysing advertisements from the point of view of

Relevance theory. This theory can be readily applied to understand how text helps in

understanding visuals as this theory forms the basis for explaining pictorial communication.

Sperber and Wilson claim that their theory might be applied to communication in general, and

advertising is a mode of communication as well (Forceville, 1996, p. 98).

Relevance theory is a cognitive pragmatic theory, which focuses on processes in the human

mind and introduces the ‘principle or relevance’ in order to explain how a reader is able to make sense of a linguistic code and interpret it. The ‘principle of relevance’ explains that an

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situation and that a sender has the intention to transmit the most pertinent meaning (Sperber

and Wilson, 1986). People have the knowledge that everything that they see in an

advertisement is purposeful and nothing is accidental. Elements included in an advertisement

can be motivated (Pateman, 1980). As an addressee assumes that a sender conveys relevant

information and has chosen the best available stimulus, they stop inferring a message when

they believe they have achieved relevance(Sperber and Wilson, 1986).

In any attempt of communicating information, a sender attempts to reach out to the cognitive

environment of a receiver. Once a message is conveyed, a receiver connects the information

one already has with the newly received information. If communication is successful, it means

that a communicator managed to alter a receiver’s cognitive environment. This effect in the Relevance Theory is labelled as ‘contextual implication’ (Forceville, 1996). A receiver assumes that an intended interpretation must be the one that is relevant, and the least cognitive

effort was required to arrive at it (Sperber and Wilson, 1986). The more effort one needs to

understand a message, the less relevant it becomes (Forceville, 2020, p.41).

The communicator uses a variety of stimuli to reach out to one’s cognitive environment. In advertising, these stimuli are verbal and non-verbal. The range of interpretations of these

stimuli are restrictedby the knowledge of a receiver that a communicator is as relevant in that

context and situation as possible (Forceville, 2020, p. 42). Therefore, context when inferring a

message plays a huge role. Here it is important to highlight Sperber and Wilson’s claim that

‘relevance is always relevance to an individual’ (1986, p. 142) and we are not able to detect which interpretation an individual has chosen. However, if a group of individuals share

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to arrive at a similar interpretation or at least partly agree on it, which is called a strong

implicature (Forceville, 1996, p. 113) and will be introduced later in this chapter.

In advertising, the background knowledge that an advertiser tries to persuade a receiver is

essential to arrive at an intended meaning as well. Contemporary advertising is full of

metaphoric meanings (Forceville, 1996) and the knowledge of the intention of the genre of

advertising is crucial (Forceville, 2020, p. 149). People have the contextual understanding that

advertisers try to sell their ideas and convince (literally or metaphorically), which has certain

advantages for our understanding of the meaning (Barthes, 1977, Forceville, 2020). When an

advertiser includes a metaphor in an advertisement, their task is to make a clear connection

between an image and text and to create the right association with a product. Therefore, here

the principle of Relevance comes into play (Forceville, 1996).

Given that advertisements often incorporate metaphorical meanings, there is some research

done, which specifically focused on this matter. Previous study on metaphors in advertising by

Mulken et al. (2010) reveals that addressees find advertisements containing metaphors more

complex than the ones that are straightforward and do not include a metaphor to convey a

message. However, addressees prefer advertisements which include metaphors due to

appreciation and gratification involved when solving a riddle (2010).

Their study focused only on advertisements that did not have any verbal information and

consisted of visual means only. However, the authors claim that in future research it would be

valuable to investigate advertisements that incorporate linguistic message as well, since verbal

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al., 2010). In this study specifically advertisements that include verbal anchoring will be

scrutinised.

2.3. Ambiguity in advertising: the role of written discourse

This thesis discusses the role of text in decoding an image in advertising and the question to

what extent text helps us to arrive to an intended meaning, thus it is important to discuss how

important the presence of word in an advertisement is. According to Forceville, if an

advertisement contains an image only and no verbal communication is present, the

understanding of the idea of that advertisement heavily depends on drawing conclusions based

on reasoning (2020). If the advertisement contains a complicated metaphor, a receiver engages

in a complex processing activity. In this situation, if no anchoring is provided, an advertisement

might remain misunderstood, which could result in controversy. In these ambiguous and

complicated advertisements, more anchoring is necessary (Djafarova, 2016). However, most

advertisers also use a linguistic message together with an image. In this way text is able to

‘anchor’ that image. Verbal information helps a receiver to concentrate and identify necessary elements of an image and, based on that, restrict the range of possible interpretations. A crucial

point for this thesis is that ‘the less verbal anchoring is present, we may deduce, the greater the range of interpretations that is possible’ (Forceville, 1996, p. 102). Some advertisements might

not be understood unless we take the linguistic code into account (Forceville, 2020, p. 149).

Therefore, text in many cases is important in guiding a receiver to a particular interpretation of

an advertisement.

Another point necessary to discuss is that text in advertisements often incorporates so called

deliberate ambiguity. There are linguistic meanings in advertising most people can agree on.

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strategy an advertiser might seek for. For this reason, looking for ‘fixed’ meanings in advertising means ‘to miss the point’ (Cook, 1992, p. 45). This thesis, therefore, is not concerned to find one and only meaning of a certain advertisement. It rather seeks to understand

how text shapes people’s interpretations of an advertisement and when the range of interpretations is the highest.

Deliberate ambiguity in advertising results in the appearance of weak implicatures (Forceville,

1996). Even though we see that sometimes advertising may not convey precise meanings and,

instead, encourages appearance of weak implicatures and weak communication in general, not

all advertisements are of this nature. Even though advertisements trigger implicatures, which

differ in their strength, some advertisements also include explicit information and, in this case,

involve explicatures. Explicatures in advertising come in form of price, information about a

product, selling location, logo of a product, etc. (Forceville, 1996).

Relevance theory also reveals that the ambiguity degree of an advertisement depends on the

effort an advertisement requires from consumers to arrive to an intended meaning. An

ambiguous image poses certain risks for advertisers that their advertisement is going to remain

misinterpreted if there is too little anchoring involved (Djafarova, 2016).

Verbal message to support an image is specifically necessary in advertisements where the

overall message of an advertisement is far-fetched from what is depicted in that image. In other

words, if an object in an image cannot be easily connected to an intended meaning of that

advertisement, text is crucial to make sense of it. For this reason, the importance of text in each

advertisement varies: in some cases, the verbal message is essential, but in other cases an image

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Thus, in advertising, there are some interpretations that people agree on more, but there also

exist interpretations that a group of people might not share. In relevance terms, these are strong

and weak implicatures (Forceville, 1996, p. 196). There is a chance of a whole range of weak

implicatures that are derived by separate individuals. According to Forceville, in order to

account for different interpretations and meanings hidden in an advertisement, empirical

research or the use of a questionnaire is unavoidable. He also emphasises that it is relevant and

compelling to research individuals’ interpretations of advertisements, a matter which did not receive much attention (1996, p. 165).

As the theoretical background of importance of written text in advertising is explored in depth,

it is important to move on to the next section, which discussed weak and strong communication

in advertising.

2.4. Weak versus strong message

As this paper aims to analyse different relationships between text and visuals in advertising

and attempts to answer how different roles of text give rise to strong and weak communication,

the distinction between these two concepts is crucial to make.

Relevance theory introduces the notion of weakly and strongly conveyed messages, which both

might be present in advertising (Forceville, 2020, p. 166). According to Relevance Theory,

there are many cases when communication is vague and carries symbolic meanings. This idea

can be accounted for with the distinction between explicatures and implicatures. As Sperber

and Wilson explain, ‘the explicatures of an utterance are constructed by enriching a linguistically encoded logical form to a point where it expresses a determinate proposition’

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(1993, p. 6). Thus, relevance in combination with semantic meaning gives rise to explicatures

(Birner, 2013). The less context is needed in order to deduce an explicature, the more explicit

it is. Thus, explicature is a graded concept (Forceville, 2020).

Thus, can an image have explicatures? Forceville and Clark (2014) in their work “Can pictures

have explicatures?” claim that the visual stimuli give rise to explicatures when they are

accompanied by coded meanings. Even though Forceville (2020) states that an image in

combination with the linguistic message can evoke explicatures, ‘it remains a matter of debate

to what extent we should ascribe explicatures to them [to images]’ (2020, p. 97). Thus, the question if images give rise to explicatures by themselves is debated.

Forceville (2014) presents the following example of how one can derive explicatures and

implicatures from an image:

Picture 7. A picture of Barack Obama (In Forceville, 2014, p. 61).

In the cartoon Barack Obama, the former U.S. president, is depicted. It is possible to arrive at

this conclusion because of the resemblance between a person in the cartoon and the president.

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refers to the former president’s original poster that was used during his election campaign in 2008. The long nose refers to Pinocchio, whose nose grows whenever this fictional character

tells a lie. Forceville claims that all this gives rise to explicature “Obama is a liar”, where textual

information ‘lies’ anchors the image. Implicatures of this cartoon could be the following: “do not trust Obama”, “do not vote for Obama” (2014, p. 61). In order to retrieve this type of information and to arrive at an implicature or explicature, an addressee needs to use a lot of

knowledge in their cognitive environment. If one does not know a person depicted or has never

heard of Pinocchio, they would fail to decode the intended message (Forceville, 2014).

On the other hand, implicatures are implicit and can be calculated on the basis that a speaker

is cooperative in making the utterance to achieve optimal relevance (Sperber and Wilson,

1986). Implicatures can be either weak or strong. In order to understand the difference between

those two concepts, let us consider the followingexample (Sperber and Wilson, 1986)in which

Peter asks Mary if she wants some coffee. If Mary is hesitant and her answer to Peter’s offer is that coffee would keep her awake, she strongly implicates that she does not wish to drink any

coffee. However, she also communicates some additional details. At the same time Mary

weakly implicates that she wants to go to sleep early, that she feels tired or is not ready for

discussions regarding any serious matters. These additional assumptions are not as strongly

conveyed to Peter or as easily derivable as the fact that she does not wish to drink coffee. Weak

implicatures that an individual arrives at highly vary from person to person, whilst strong

implicatures are usually at least partly shared by a group of people (Forceville, 1996, p. 113).

Strong implicatures are necessary to be derived to make sense of something (Forceville, 2014).

However, according to Forceville, advertising very often favours triggering weak implicatures

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In advertising, it is a hard task to draw a strict dividing line between weak and strong

implicatures (Forceville, 1996, p. 104, p.196). However, Forceville claims that every

advertisement comes with at least two strong implicatures: ‘this is an advertisement for brand

X’, ‘this advertisement makes a positive claim about brand X’ (1996, p. 104). These two strongly implicated ideas can be essential in order to understand an advertisement. Forceville

provides the following example to illustrate this point: imagine if a product in an advertisement

is described as old-fashioned. This description could either have negative or positive

connotations. That is, a product is either of a high quality or, reversely, far from modern (1996).

Knowing that every advertisement has a strong implicature of praising a brand and product, a

receiver is bound to attribute positive aspects to that product and take a positive connotation as

relevant in that advertisement (Forceville, 2020, p. 150).

2.5. Speaker/receiver commitment

The focus of the study is on speaker commitment as well since it is essential to deduce if

advertisers can be held accountable for people’s interpretations arising from different advertisements. This paper seeks to find out if strong implicatures can arise in advertisements

with little or no verbal anchoring and if in these cases responsibility rests with a speaker or an

addressee. There are many cases when advertisements cause dissatisfaction among receivers

due to some controversial ideas they might implicate, as presented in the introduction of this

paper. This study helps to answer the question to what extent people agree on implicatures of

problematic and ambiguous advertisements and if advertisers are accountable for people’s

interpretations.

So far, the picture is clear that text in some advertisements has the function of ‘anchoring’, where it explains an image and guides a reader to a certain interpretation. However, some

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advertisements might include a linguistic message, which tells a completely different story than

an image itself. It is compelling to draw upon the speaker’s commitment in both cases and specifically in situations where image might convey ‘hidden’ or even controversial meanings, which are not verbally indicated. As Kress and van Leeuwen claim, some images might even

contain interpretations with sexist or stereotypical ideas (2006, p. 20), a point which is crucial

to this study. Therefore, it is relevant to find out what is the accountability of a speaker for

something a reader might derive from a non-verbal part of an advertisement.

Relevance theory and the distinction between strong and weak implicatures help us to

determine the concept of accountability in advertising as well. The stronger an idea is

communicated, the higher the communicator’s accountability for an interpretation an addressee arrived at. The weaker an idea is communicated, the higher accountability rests with an

addressee. In advertising, weak implicatures are very common. The weaker they are, the more

responsibility of deriving them remains with a receiver (Forceville, 2020, p. 48). This is a type

of strategy advertisers sometimes try to adopt, which is to weakly implicate certain ideas and

not to be blamed after for any consequences or controversies that might arise. Examples of

these implicit messages in advertising are commonly related to certain taboo topics.

Advertising is abundant with weak communication as in this way advertisers are able to shift

responsibility for derived messages to addressees (Tanaka, 1994). However, the less effort one

needs to arrive at an interpretation, the more likely that this is the intended meaning by a

speaker (Morency et al., 2008).

The idea that advertisers try to specifically encourage the appearance of weak implicatures in

order not to be held accountable for interpretations is also emphasised by Kress and van

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in a situation when advertisers are blamed for what a certain image implies, they are able to

shrug off the responsibility by saying that it is ‘in the eye of the beholder’ (2006, p. 20), which would not be possible to say about the verbal part of an advertisement (Kress and van Leeuwen,

2006).

Even though it is clear that receivers themselves are responsible for deriving weak implicatures,

it is much harder task to attribute commitment for strong implicatures. According to Morency

et al., one cannot surely claim that a speaker is fully responsible for implicatures since they

might be easily defeated and accountability for certain assumptions fall on a receiver. An issue

with implicatures is that ‘commitment attribution can never constitute a safe bet’ (2008, p.198) since a receiver is to a degree responsible for deriving speaker meaning. There is no method to

precisely measure and thus to claim that a speaker is fully committed for implicatures, even

though hearers often attribute commitment to speakers. However, the authors indicate that

some implicatures can have a high degree of commitment (2008, p. 204). Because implicatures

can be cancelled, implicating is far less committal than saying. Implicatures are

non-truth-conditional; their truth value is not reflected in the utterance that carries them (Mazzarella et

al., 2018), which makes speaker commitment not as strongly manifested (Moeschler, 2013).

However, Forceville (2014) claims that a speaker is nevertheless committed for self-evident

implicatures. According to him, strong implicatures are implicatures ‘for whose derivation the sender takes responsibility’ (2014, p. 9). Thus, it is evident that speaker commitment is a hotly debated topic.

On the other hand, a speaker can be fully held responsible for explicatures (Morency et al.,

2008, Sperber and Wilson, 1986). The derivation of explicatures or even evident implicatures

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illustrates this point well: if someone shouts ‘Fire!’, they are strongly accountable for what is

communicated. If there was no fire after all, a person who was misinformed might declare that

they were lied at. On the other hand, saying “I seem to perceive a somewhat smoky smell” (2014, p. 6) would make hearers responsible themselves for deriving the meaning that there is

a fire. In case there was no fire, they could not accuse anyone of lying (2014).

To conclude, commitment of a speaker depends on how strongly an idea is communicated, as

it is a degree-sensitive concept. Coded meanings and explicatures are highly committal.

However, implicatures might have either high or low degree of commitment associated with

them, depending on how strong that implicature is (Forceville, 2020, p. 48, Morency et al.,

27 3. Methodology

3.1. Method and materials

In order to be able to indicate implicatures or explicatures that arise in advertisements, using a

questionnaire is highly important in this study. Empirical research is helpful to avoid

subjectivity of an analyst and helps to answer the question to what extent people’s interpretations of certain advertisements coincide or differ (Forceville, 1996). In order to find

out the hidden meanings of advertisements and implicatures, an analyst’s intuitions are not reliable enough by themselves.

Including the questionnaire in the study also gives the possibility to talk about speaker and

receiver commitment as well since strong and weak implicatures will be deduced from

respondents’ answers. The questionnaire will present an undeniable data about strong and weak communication in different advertisements and will lead to a discussion about speaker

commitment. Forcevile (1996) in his IBM billboards study claims that the more responses are

assigned to a particular implicature, the stronger that implicature is (1996, p.196). This study

follows this rationale and considers that interpretations on which people agreed the most can

be counted as ‘stronger’ communication than interpretations which are mentioned once or a couple of times only.

In this paper 10 Lithuanian advertisements are scrutinised. Advertisements that contain both

the written discourse and image are included only. Martinec and Salway’s (2005) system of text-image relations is used in order to categorise advertisements and to explain what role text

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(Figure 1 from page 8)

Categorisation of advertisements is essential since it defines text roles and gives a possibility

to compare results depending on a category. Three types of advertisements are scrutinised in

this study:

1) ‘Text subordinate to image’, where text is present in order to explain an image;

2) ‘Equal complementary’, where text to some extent refers to an image, but image and text

have their own independent meanings;

3) ‘Equal independent’, where there is no sign of one modifying another.

All three types of image-text relations are common to advertising (Martinec and Salway, 2005).

However, advertisements where image is subordinate to text (Picture 3 in Chapter 2) are not

included in the study. This type of relation is not as common in advertising. It is also not

particularly essential to this study since text is the main part of these advertisements and

meanings are not implicit and are entirely straightforward. Looking into this type of

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stated by the coded meaning. All other three types of textual-visual relationships included in

this research are necessary in order to see if text is crucial to strongly implicate an idea and

what are the differences between strong and weak implicatures in these three sets of

advertisements with different roles of text. Thus, the study presents people’s interpretations of advertisements with both extensive and minimal verbal anchoring.

4 out of 10 advertisements included in the study (in the categories ‘equal independent’ and

‘equal complementary’) are of controversial nature and received negative feedback after they were created and shown to the general public. These controversial advertisements were

specifically chosen to include in the questionnaire as they naturally lead to a discussion about

speaker commitment. For example, some of the advertisements were criticised due to their

possible sexist or discriminatory ideas. However, creators of some of these advertisements

managed to avoid any charges since there was no explicit text included, which would verify

interpretations arising from the disputed image. This study examines such advertisements and

reveals if most people could agree on the derogatory nature of them and, consequently, it shows

if there were any grounds for criticising the advertisers and if they can be indeed held

accountable.

One weakness of including controversial advertisements is that respondents, after seeing a few

of them, might already have an idea that this questionnaire includes controversial

advertisements and might be primed to comment about them in a negative way. Thus, one

should bear that in mind when reading the results chapter. However, the questionnaire presents

the advertisements in a random order (mixing controversial as well as non-controversial

advertisements) to minimise possible effect of respondents knowing the focus of the study and

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On the other hand, advertisements, which appear in ‘text subordinate to image’ category are

rarely controversial as text in these advertisements are usually explicit and thus the idea behind

an image is less disputed. However, speaker or receiver commitment regarding these

advertisements is discussed as well in order to show which interpretations arising from the

same advertisements are entirely dependent on a receiver and which ones appear due to the

textual information present in an advertisement.

The questionnaire included in the study consists of the following questions:

1) What does the image in the advertisement communicate to you?

2) Please rate from 1 to 10 how confident you are about your interpretation of the

advertisement.

The first question is expected to reveal explicatures and implicatures that the participants arrive

at whilst looking at an image present in an advertisement. Since there are three different

categories of advertisements included in the study that have distinct roles of text, it is compared

to what extent people are able to arrive at similar interpretations regarding each category. This

question is specifically asking what the image communicates, rather than the advertisement as

such. The second question reveals how confident people are with their own interpretations and

gives a possibility to understand if people are more likely to be confident about advertisements

where text is explicit and provides clues on how to decode an image.

Moreover, the relevant context for some of the advertisements analysed in the questionnaire

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contextual information as it would yield rather inaccurate results (Forceville, 1996). A brief

context is provided with such advertisements that contain some unknown details – name of

medicine, explanation of some possibly unknown words. Only when the necessary information

is provided it is possible to obtain a clear and concise interpretation from respondents.

3.2. Analysis of data

In total, 103 Lithuanian respondents participated in the study. However, this study analyses

answers of 86 respondents only (and thus 86 counts as 100%) since not all respondents

provided full answers and left empty gaps to some of the questions. 86 respondents provided

full and concise answers and only their answers are analysed in order to obtain clear and

non-misleading results. In addition, only Lithuanian people were asked to complete the

questionnaire as cultural differences could skew the study results and some advertisements

were particular to the Lithuanian culture and language specifically.

Respondents’ interpretations for each advertisement are classified and percentages are calculated. Advertisements’ interpretations are classified into ‘themes’, which are drawn from

individuals’ answers. Each response is assigned to a relevant theme (following the study by Forceville, 1996). The number of themes varies per each advertisement. Also, it is important

to mention that some respondents mentioned more than one theme. Respondents were not

asked to restrict themselves to only one interpretation as it allowed them to provide strong and

weak implicatures (following the study by Forceville, 1996). The graphs with percentages

calculated per each theme are included in the results chapter. They show to what extent people

agreed on interpretations of each advertisement and, consequently, points to strong and weak

communication. Graphs also contain the section ‘other’ with the percentage for interpretations,

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as it shows the range of weak implicatures per advertisement that are highly individual. From

the theoretical background it is expected that the better textual anchorage is present in an

advertisement, the lower the percentage appearing in the ‘other’ category is.

It is important to mention that there certainly appear some difficulties when categorising results

into themes, the methodological issue mentioned by Forceville (1996) as well. The line

between different interpretations sometimes might appear rather fuzzy. Also, respondents use

their own language and expressions and their answers are not always clearly pointing to a

specific interpretation, which might also make it difficult to assign that answer to a certain

theme. In these cases when the boundary is rather fuzzy and it is quite complex to assign a

certain interpretation to a particular theme, categorisation of results by different analysts could

slightly differ. However, once the main themes are drawn, each answer is assigned to the closest

theme possible.

Once the results with respondents’ interpretations are obtained, it is discussed if text is crucial to strongly convey the message in advertising and to what extent the range of interpretations

varies among different sets of advertisements. After it is deduced if lack of explicit text means

weak communication only, the issue of speaker commitment is discussed and the study

explores in which cases the speaker could be committed to the ideas behind advertisements.

Thus, the questionnaire and results obtained about strong and weak communication appearing

in advertisements are crucial to set the ground for the discussion about commitment attribution.

In sum, the study helps to find out the role of text in the emergence of strong and weak

communication from visual stimuli and explores to what extent a speaker can be held

33 4. Results. Individuals’ interpretations and speaker commitment

In this section the focus is on examining respondents’ interpretations of different advertisements. It is determined in which cases people agree on the meaning of visual stimuli

included in an advertisement the most and if lack of text always results in weak implicatures.

Every advertisement in this chapter is discussed in terms of speaker/receiver commitment as

well.

4.1. Advertisements with text being subordinate to image

In this subcategory advertisements involving text subordination to image are discussed. In these

advertisements word is necessary to arrive at the meaning and it has the function of anchoring.

Text limits possible interpretations and explains the intended meaning by an advertiser.

Without text, the image in this type of advertisement could not successfully convey the

intended message on its own (Martinec and Salway, 2005).

4.1.1. Advertisement of Northway medical centre

4.1.1.1. Respondents’ interpretations

In 2019, the private medical centre Northway was given an award for their advertisement, in

which, according to the organiser of the best advertisement awards, they managed to stand out

from other participants by showing their competitive advantage (“Northway: padedame įveikti sveikatos audras”, 2020):

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Picture 8. Northway advertisement. (Translation from Lithuanian: We help you to tackle your health storms)

In this advertisement the main text indicates the following: ‘we help you to tackle your health storms’. On the right corner there appear words ‘Northway medical centre’, which provide the reader with the contextual information. This contextual information is also highly important in

order to understand the advertisement. Once a reader notices that the advertisement pertains to

a medical centre, they understand that this advertisement seeks to promote services and attract

more patients. Because of this contextual knowledge, two strong implicatures appear from the

advertisement (Forceville, 1996):

1) ‘This is an advertisement for Northway medical centre’;

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The image of the advertisement portrays a group of people on a ship. They all wear blue sets

of clothing, which gives a hint that this is a medical team. They all seem determined and

focused, but also very confident in what they are doing. They are in the middle of the storm

since the high waves are seen behind their backs, but the team seems to be tackling it

successfully. This kind of portrayal results in metaphoricity.

This advertisement pertains to the category ‘text subordinate to image’ as text anchors the image and helps for a reader to interpret the meaning of visuals. From the theoretical

background presented in chapter 1, it is clear that the verbal message in this advertisement is

necessary to explain the image. Text provides the reader with clues of what is depicted in the

picture and restricts the range of possible interpretations. Without the text ‘we help you to tackle your health storms’, it might not be possible to understand why the Northway medical team is depicted on a ship and in the sea. With the help of the text, the reader is able to calculate

the intended meaning.

The following graph shows to what extent respondents agreed on interpretations of the

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Graph 1. Interpretations of Northway advertisement

a. Northway medical team is ready to heal people b. Teamwork is key in tackling health issues c. Northway team is professional and effective d. Other (individual interpretations)

From the bar chart above it is clear that 71% of respondents mentioned that the image suggests

that the Northway medical team is ready to help their patients. Since this advertisement says

‘we help you to tackle your health storms’, we might argue that this interpretation could be regarded as explicature, as it is possibly decoded from the linguistic message included in the

advertisement and it states the same idea as text: ‘we help you to tackle your health storms’. If

we go back to the example of the Obama poster explained earlier in this paper, the word ‘lies’ anchors the explicature ‘Obama is a liar’. In the Northway advertisement the same happens as the linguistic message gives rise to explicature, which is that the Northway team helps people

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Interestingly, 63% of respondents answered that the image also suggests the importance of

teamwork in tackling patients’ health issues. This is an implicature inferred from the

advertisement. Even though the text does not state explicitly that teamwork is vital in order to

help people, most of the respondents agreed that the image also gives rise to that meaning. This

might be because the word padedame (Eng. we help) is a plural form of the verb and therefore

suggests teamwork. Also, the image portrays a group of medics together fighting the storm.

Thus, possibly the word padedame in combination with the picture gave rise to a very strong

implicature.

26% of respondents mentioned that the image suggests effectiveness and professionality of the

Northway medical team. This interpretation is also an implicature as text does not state

anything related to effectiveness or professionality but mentions the metaphor ‘tackle the

storm’. In the image the team is depicted as determined, strong and successfully fighting the storm, which could have given the reason for this implicature to appear.

14% of questionnaire participants mentioned various interpretations, which were regarded as

individual since most people did not agree on them and they were mentioned several times

only. For instance, some respondents answered that the image depicts ‘strength’, ‘healthy

lifestyle’, ‘freedom’, ‘risks’, ‘storm is a disease’, ‘taking care of one’s health’, ‘healthy medics’, ‘having a good time’. These are highly individual interpretations and thus can be regarded as weak implicatures of the advertisement.

The following chart shows how confident respondents were about their interpretations of the

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Graph 2. How confident respondents were about Northway advertisement interpretations

40% of people provided the highest possible number to evaluate their certainty. This data is

relevant to the study as it shows that people found the meaning behind the image

understandable and it is possible to predict that text helped to interpret the visual mode.

4.1.1.2. Speaker and receiver commitment regarding interpretations of Northway advertisement

In Chapter 1 it is emphasised that a speaker is fully accountable for explicatures, which can be

decoded from the linguistic message (Morency et al., 2008, Sperber and Wilson, 1986).

Following this idea, it is possible to claim that the responsibility for the explicature ‘Northway

medical team is ready to heal people’ fully rests with the advertiser.

Implicatures, on the other hand, can have different degrees of commitment. The stronger the

implicature, the stronger the commitment of a speaker (Morency et al., 2008, Forceville, 2020).

The Northway advertisement has a very strong implicature, which is ‘Teamwork is key in

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effective’. The creator of the advertisement could be regarded more responsible for the former implicature, as 63% of respondents mentioned it (thus it is more strongly communicated to the

audience) and only 26% suggested the latter. Advertisers are more accountable for the

‘teamwork is key’ implicature because they included a plural verb form and depicted a group of people fighting together.

As Morency et al. (2008) noted, implicatures might be defeated and, consequently, one cannot

claim that the speaker is 100% committed to them. If we follow this rationale, implicatures

could be cancelled in the following way:

b. Teamwork is key in tackling health issues, but not necessarily.

c. The Northway team is professional and effective, but not every time.

However, it is highly unlikely that an advertiser would deny commitment to positive

implicatures and the cancellation is rather odd. Moreover, it is important to note that possible

cancellation of an implicature does not necessarily mean that a speaker is not accountable for

that implicature. Some implicatures might be possible to cancel, but they still might be very

hard to deny (Boogaart et al., 2020). It is possible to state then that the advertiser is highly

committed to both implicatures.

Finally, the responsibility for implicatures appearing in the ‘other’ category, such as ‘strength’,

‘healthy lifestyle’, ‘freedom’, ‘risks’, ‘storm is a disease’, ‘taking care of one’s health’, ‘healthy medics’ and ‘having a good time’ rests with receivers as they are weak implicatures (Forceville, 1996), which were mentioned by a few respondents only.

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Thus, the Northway advertisement shows that most of the respondents agreed on the meaning

of the image as most of them mentioned the explicature. The fact that people arrived at an

explicature tells that text indeed helped to indicate the meaning of the image and it acted as an

anchor. In addition, the advertiser is fully accountable for the explicature, whilst the

responsibility of the advertiser for implicatures greatly varies as the strength of them, as it is

seen from respondents' answers, is rather uneven.

4.1.2. Social anti-smoking advertisement

4.1.2.1. Respondents’ interpretations

Lithuanian Medical Students Association (LiMSA), which focuses on societal issues, such as

smoking in this case, created the following advertisement in order to fight high numbers of

smokers in Lithuania:

Picture 9. LiMSA advertisement against smoking. (Translation from Lithuanian: My mother smoked when I was a child)

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According to the authors of the advertisement, this advertisement suggests that smoking might

result in abnormal features and has other detrimental effects to one’s health (“Socialinės reklamos projektas prieš rūkymą”, 2007).

This advertisement contains a picture of a fish having multiple eyes and human hands. The

image creates an idea of something atypical and unpleasant. The main text in bigger letters next

to the picture says ‘my mother smoked when I was a child’. Words on the right corner simply indicate who designed the advertisement (LiMSA). The fact that it is written on the

advertisement that the association of students of medicine are the authors of it might also give

hints to a receiver that the advertisement is meant to fight health issues and thus encourages

healthy habits. This contextual information is possibly helpful in interpreting the advertisement

as well.

This social advertisement against smoking pertains to ‘text subordinate to image’ category, because text here helps to understand the image and explains what is depicted in the

advertisement. Without text, image would not carry meaning on its own and it would not be

possible to interpret why there is a fish with abnormal features. Because of the linguistic

message present, it is possible to use it as a reference to the image and thus interpret it

successfully. The word ‘smoking’ is highly important to understand the main idea behind the

image as it refers to the issue in mind.

From the theoretical review it is possible to hypothesise that receivers will be able to arrive at

similar interpretations of the advertisement as verbal anchoring ensures restriction of possible

interpretations and diminishes the possibility of ambiguity. The following graph shows if that

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Graph 3. Interpretations of LiMCA anti-smoking advertisement

a. Smoking harms a child b. Don’t smoke c. Smoking is harmful d. Other (individual interpretations)

The chart presented above reveals that 68% of individuals’ responses indicated that the image communicates that smoking harms a child. Since the main text in the advertisement contains

such phrases as ‘my mother’ and ‘when I was a child’, most of the people agreed that this advertisement specifically talks about smoking mothers’ issue and stresses the negative effects to the health of their children. This is a very strong implicature of the advertisement as it needs

be inferred.

The second interpretation, which accounts for 47% of respondents’ answers, is an encouragement ‘don’t smoke’. This second most common interpretation could be regarded as a general message that the advertisement conveys. The interpretation ‘don’t smoke’ is an

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implicature of this advertisement. Forceville (2014) argued that the poster of Obama contains

the implicature ‘don’t vote for Obama’. Even though in the poster text contains only one word, which is ‘liar’, and there is no verbal text, which would discourage one from voting, this idea could still be inferred and, consequently, can be regarded as an implicature. In the same vein,

‘don’t smoke’ is an implicature that can be inferred from the advertisement by LiMSA.

35% of respondents indicated that the image communicates the following: ‘smoking is harmful’. 35% of individuals’ responses did not mention mother-child issue necessarily or that the image says ‘don’t smoke’. This interpretation is also an implicature of the advertisement.

Finally, individual interpretations in the ‘other’ category amount to 5% only. A few of respondents mentioned that for them the picture communicates ‘selfishness’, ‘indifferent parents’, ‘foolish mother’. These individual interpretations are weak implicatures. Interestingly, there are only a few weak implicatures that arise from the image and most of the

people mentioned either one of the three most common interpretations. Because of the low

number of weak implicatures, it is possible to argue that the advertisement contains rather

strong verbal anchoring, which results in a restriction of possible interpretations.

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Graph 4. How confident respondents were about LiMCA advertisement interpretations

47% of participants indicated complete certainty about their own interpretations. Only a few

respondents answered that they are unsure about what meaning the illustration conveys, but the

overall picture shows that people were rather undoubtful about what the image communicates.

This high confidence could be present due to strong verbal anchoring included in the study.

4.1.2.2. Speaker and receiver commitment regarding interpretations of LiMSA anti-smoking advertisement

As it was argued earlier that ‘smoking harms a child’ could count as a very strong implicature as most of the respondents mentioned it, this implicature is highly committal.

Other two common interpretations of this advertisement are also strong implicatures. 47% of

individuals answered that the image communicates ‘don’t smoke’ and 35% said that ‘smoking is harmful’. It is possible to claim that there is high accountability resting with the advertiser for deriving these implicatures as they are rather strongly manifested and the purpose of the

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Weak implicatures which appear in the category ‘other’ are entirely individual and appear due to people’s personal opinions, experiences, judgements, etc. Responsibility for weak implicatures ‘selfishness’, ‘indifferent parents’ and ‘foolish mother’ of the advertisement entirely rests with the respondents themselves.

To sum up the findings of this advertisement, verbal anchoring restricted interpretations of the

anti-smoking advertisement as there were just a few weak implicatures that informants

mentioned. Respondents were able to agree that the advertisement discourages smoking and

emphasises the negative effects for one’s health. Due to the text and image of the advertisement, ‘smoking harms a child’ was a very common interpretation, which is also highly committal. Whilst for weak implicatures the responsibility rests with the respondents

themselves, accountability could be attributed to the advertiser for informants deriving a strong

implicature ‘don’t smoke’.

4.1.3. Telmisartan Sandoz advertisement

4.1.3.1. Respondents’ interpretations

The following advertisement promotes the medicine ‘Telmisartan Sandoz’, which is used to lower blood pressure:

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Picture 10. ‘Telmisartan Sandoz’ advertisement. (Translation from Lithuanian: The source of your health and life)

There are two sets of text in the advertisement: on the left, text mentions the name of the

medicine, which is ‘Telmisartan Sandoz’ and on the right, text says ‘the source of your health and life’. The image depicts a heart full of life. Nature, trees and spring water included in the picture suggest a healthy and wholesome heart.

The verbal message ‘the source of your health and life’ acts as an anchor since it helps to explain the image. Without this sentence, it would be difficult to indicate why the heart is

portrayed in this way. For this reason, this advertisement pertains to ‘text subordination to image’ category.

As it was indicated in chapter 2, context is crucial in understanding of an image (Piazza and

Haarman, 2016). Even though text often anchors the image and helps to explain it, without

relevant contextual information a receiver might fail to interpret an image. The importance of

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1996). For this reason, next to the advertisement in the questionnaire it was briefly indicated

what ‘Telmisartan Sandoz’ is used for, as there was a chance that most respondents would not know this information. The explanation was the following: ‘Telmisartan Sandoz’ lowers blood

pressure’. Respondents, who encounter the name of the medicine for the first time, could have failed to answer the question and the questionnaire could have yielded inaccurate and

non-significant results. The aim was to provide respondents with crucial information in order to

receive meaningful results.

Knowing that informants have the contextual knowledge and that the advertisement contains

explanatory text, it was expected that they would mention similar interpretations. This graph

illustrates how respondents interpreted the image:

Graph 5. Interpretations of the Telmisartan Sandoz advertisement

a. Telmisartan Sandoz improves heart health b. Use Telmisartan Sandoz for healthy heart c. Healthy heart means healthy life d. Other

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Most of the respondents (65%) answered that the image communicates that ‘Telmisartan Sandoz’ improves heart health and its function. Heart is the main component of the image, thus respondents mentioned good effects of the medicine to the heart specifically. Even though the

word ‘heart’ does not appear in the main text of the advertisement, it is still possible to argue that the interpretation ‘Telmisartan Sandoz improves heart health’ could be regarded as an

explicature of this advertisement. This interpretation is derived from the verbal message ‘the source of your health and life’ and the contextual information. Text in the advertisement mentions improving health, and this is exactly the interpretation people mentioned the most as

well – improving heart health. Going back to Obama’s example, the word ‘liar’ gave rise to the

explicature ‘Obama is a liar’, whilst in this case words ‘source of health’ gives rise to explicature ‘the medicine improves heart health’. Moreover, according to Forceville, ‘the identification of the pictorial metaphor itself would count as an explicature’ (1996, p. 195).

32% of the respondents mentioned that the image tries to sell the product and says ‘use

Telmisartan Sandoz for a healthy heart’. This is an implicature of the advertisement. Text does not mention explicitly the necessity to use the product. However, respondents are aware that

this is an advertisement and the advertiser tries to sell the product. Because of this contextual

knowledge, they mentioned the implicature ‘use this medicine and your heart will be healthy’. Another implicature that respondents mentioned is ‘healthy heart means healthy life’, which accounts for 15%.

13% of respondents mentioned other weak implicatures. These were ‘heart is the most important organ’, ‘nature is necessary for a good heart health’, ‘health is the most important’, etc..