This study examines the linguistic, pragmatic and semiotic mechanisms through which identities are constructed in the urban linguistic landscape of central Athens. Drawing on sociopragmatics and the study of semiotic landscapes, the analysis focuses on non-institutional texts (slogans and inscriptions) selected from a corpus of 268 texts, collected through systematic photographic documentation between March and June 2025. The texts are classified into four thematic categories: social, athletic, political and gendered activist messages. The analysis reveals that the creators of these texts employ strategies such as the subversion of deontic modality, irony and spatial deixis to construct identity dipoles, an inclusive “us” (citizens, women, sports fans) versus a “them” (power institutions, perpetrators of violence, social constraints). The findings also highlight the semiotic dimension and converge with previous studies, confirming the role of the linguistic landscape as a dynamic field of social negotiation, ideological positioning and collective action.