Bite-Size Semiotics

Boring Tuesdays: Price of pajama pants

This post is part of our Boring series, where one Tuesdays we sometimes post analyses on signs we did not find particularly interesting. The idea is to offset personal biases.


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The sign we see here is indexing the pajama pants beneath it, telling us the price of them. The sign points to the pajama pants in question by both locational proximity (as an index), through an image of said paints (as in icon) and by writing out the specific brand&make of pants (as a symbol). So the sign does run the full gamut of having direct icon, symbol and index parts in it.

We also note that, as discussed by Scollon & Wong-Scollon this type of sign implicitly signals the claim that the store has authority to name a price for these pants. In particular, they are not free and you are forbidden to take them without paying.