Frame Report

An Instance of some type is conceived of as having an Identity, defined as the unique feature that distinguishes each Instance from all other instances of its type. Identity persists across time and remains constant for an Instance despite arbitrary changes in other attributes of the Instance. Establishing Identity answers the question "which".

I still have questions about her [identity|target] .
[Which|Identity] dinner did you choose ?

Identity is not the same as appearance or name (if the Instance even has such), although these attributes of the Instance may be useful in establishing Identity. Identity can be established knowing the totality of the history of an Instance; however, this is impractical and usually proxies like name and appearance are used. For the Identity of humans, history sufficient to establish Identity can usually be satisfactorily established by documents associated with the person, often with information like appearance and name, though use of such documents contributes to the problem of multiple identities, only one of which is considered legitimate or "true" in a given context. Just as we would consider gun in "fake gun" to contain a reference to the normal concept of Weapon, we consider identity in "multiple identities" to belong to this frame, even if only one of the identities is legitimate. Multiple identities can also exist when each is primarily associated with a fragment or aspect of the history and attributes of an entity, and the "true" identity might be very much debatable; in most such cases, there are different names associated with the different identities, as in the case of stage names or Ellis-Island names, but sometimes, the different "identities" go under the same name (e.g., some members of secret societies). While these may be considered different identities, they refer to the same person.

This frame is intended to cover cases where an entity is mentioned, but the category it fits is what is actually meant:

We need to determine the [identity|target] of the metal used in the picture frame .

In this case, it is not individual identity of the physical hunk of metal that is intended to be in question, but rather the category that the hunk of metal fits into; i.e., the specific element or elemental composition of the metal is what is in question. Such sentences should be understood as determining which Instance of the supercategory is intended.


This frame is not intended to cover related, and often more common, uses of the word "identity" such as "sexual identity", "national identity", or "brand identity", which do not refer to a unique identity of an Instance, or even the identity of a supercategory of the Instance, but rather refer to the specific properties of an Instance that are considered very important for how the Instance operates in aggregate. Thus, uses like "losing your identity" are not intended to be covered by this frame.