The article examines the problems of terminological confusion in matters of identity and their impact on the social and political atmosphere in societies. The purpose of the article is the study of the modern discourse on the problem of identity, the analysis of filling the concept of identity with content, the construction of a semantic "chain" in the hierarchy of identities. The methods used in the article are the historical method, the systemic method, and discourse analysis. In the results and discussion, positions of the relationship of different types of identity are given. Thus, analyzing ethnic and national identity, where it is proven that ethnic identity has a socio-cultural nature, and a national-political-legal one. The regional and civilizational subsections emphasize that the concepts of regional and civilizational identity are a pair of bipolar categories that show a person's place in the time-space cultural and political continuum. When considering civic and political identity, their similarities and differences are emphasized, and various degrees of maturity of civic identity are described: normal, deformed, and deficient. The conclusions emphasize the importance of the right identity policy, which the state should conduct. The following chain in the hierarchy of identities is proposed: the first is individual, the second is regional, the third is ethnic, the fourth is national, and the fifth is civilizational. The relationship of identities is an ensemble in which each identity can be defined depending on the orientation of the individual.
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