Many human sciences, which used the information theory as a paradigm, defined communication as exchange of meaningful information. For Maturana, communication is a coordination of behavior among living organisms performed through mutual structural coupling. Language arises when there is communication about communication, a coordination of coordinations of behavior. Through mutual structural coupling individual systems communicate and coordinate their behaviors, and bring forth common worlds to share cognition in. By attempting to share and know cognition, human beings exist also in a symbolic social domain, which in systemic terms is characterized by a high level of complexity, flexibility, instability, and unpredictability. Languaging is a communication particular to human beings.

That which inhabits the social-symbolic construct of identity can be viewed on a deeper level as a set of interconnected patterns, which tend to explore all their potential connectivity. A social-family system can be viewed in the same way (21). Identity can be defined as a network of subject positions (identity parts) in communication on both conscious and unconscious levels, coordinated through organization of productive processes and structuring. Self-reference of awareness implies that a person communicates with him/herself about the communication between his/her parts and with the network environment. A community system can be defined as a network of conscious and unconscious communication, which develops its own self-awareness in communication about communication.

As with all networks, it is arbitrary where we draw the boundaries of a system: each boundary functions as a different level of organization. Each level of organization inherits its particular level of complexity and thus particular set of emergent properties. Each drawn boundary, around a personality or around a community system, creates a closure of a network and a shared context of meaning. This silent consensus is made of a common system of beliefs, explanations, and values, which each member-component “knows together” with the others. In order to belong to a system a member must support the consensus by maintaining and amplifying the behavior stemming from the shared knowledge (22). The consensus is indispensable, as it offers ready-made patterns of connectivity to members of the community. The subject-position is the bearer of discursively determined set of connectivity patterns that any one can inhabit.

(21) The German sociologist Niklas Luhmann developed the concept of autopoiesis in social domains: he states that communication is the human particular mode of autopoietic reproduction.
(22) For more on applicability of complexity models on community systems, functional and dysfunctional patterns in individual and community systems see Appendix 1: Chaos in Social Languaging.

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