The Case of The Last of Us

Analyzing Identity from the Perspectives of Continental Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology

Abstract

Starting from the perspective of continental semiotics, this article seeks to establish a dialogue with linguistic anthropology through an analysis of the video game saga The Last of Us. Not only allowing the user to adopt different styles of play, this game also push him or her to take an ideological stance, forcing the player to step into the shoes of characters that are in narrative and existential opposition to each other. Related to this, The Last of Us has led to a polemical polarization among players, many of whom have taken sides in opposing communities. Starting from, on the one hand, linguistic anthropological concepts of register and enregisterment and, on the other hand, from the theory of enunciation and enunciative praxis in continental semiotics, I propose the concept of co-indexical identification: the process through which the semiotic work of an identity emerges by means of linguistic enunciations—in particular, through the critical condensation of competing identities already inhabiting one or more social domains—and by an ideological and axiological positioning in relation to them. The article then discusses the opposition between enunciative subjectivity and identity-related activity pertaining to the video game semiosis produced by The Last of Us. Here, I elaborate on the way in which, within any semiotic activity, it is necessary to manage the relationship between experiential and linguistic semiosis. The signs of this management reveal the semiotic work of an emerging individual identity (what I call an identification process) and open onto practices of observation or self-observation, while the temporal sedimentation of multiple identification processes leads to the emergence of social identities (or co-indexical identification). Overall, this article aims to establish the theoretical premises of a semiotics of identity.