Introduction: Indexing Persons

Abstract

Abstract This article introduces the special issue, “Indexing Persons.” In this introduction, we distinguish persona- and person-indexing registers . While the former refers to speech registers that enact social types of personhood, the latter denotes registers whose indexical value enacts and points to individuated entities (social “tokens”), such as biographical persons. In so doing, we engage with the anthropological literature on the person as a cultural category, taking two complementary perspectives: a “sign’s eye view” and a “subject’s ‘I’ view.” The first view follows sign activity to ask how semiosis indexically signifies persons, while the second centers the person and asks how their subjectivity is “made up” through semiosis. Through this discussion, we introduce the articles of the issue while reflecting on the complex dialectic between these different dimensions of enregisterment and their relationship to individuation and identity, subjectivity and personhood.