ABSTRACT
To understand the essence of identity, one must know the nature of social phenomena in general. This chapter shows that social phenomena are by nature similar to human language. There are two types of communication systems that societal species may use: the hardwired truth-telling signal systems used by animal species and symbol-based language with elaborate syntax that allows for communication about imaginary situations. Humans take certain things (signals) to represent other things (meanings) by virtue of the agreement between the members of a society that these signals should be paired with these meanings. Both human language and social phenomena are shared mental representations, i.e. they exist by virtue of the members of the society having a shared understanding of their rules and structures. This means that both symbols and social phenomena have the structure of signs, consisting of the signal part, the meaning part and a consensual link that binds them together to form a sign.
