The Linguistic Structure Of Society

John R. Searle is one of the most famous modern philosophers who is we well known,especially his philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. However we have not paymore attention to Searle's philosophy of society. This dissertation is a systemic researchabout it. His philosophy of society essentially is social ontology. Searle has investigatedthe social reality in view of his theories of intentionality and speech act. His main idea canbe generalized as follow: Collectivity assign some function to X in context C throughcollective intentionality, thereout count X as Y. It implicates three important conceptions:(1)Collective intentionality. How the different individual minds compose collectiveintention. (2)The assignment of function. The function of Y is a status function, its essenceis deontology, so this function is not performed in virtue of the physical structure of theperson or the object, but rather, in virtue of the fact that the collective intentionalityassigns a certain status to the person or object and that status enables the person or objectto perform a function which could not be performed without the collective acceptance andadmittance. Therefore, the status function could not exist without linguistic representation,the process of X to Y is also a process of representation. (3)The rule of construction. Itsmeaning is what is the rule of creating institutional fact Y. The logic form of the rule is Xcount as Y in context C. These three conceptions have not any mystery, they are veryfamiliar in our society. For example, people admit this especial paper in my hand is a onehundred dollar bill. People's acceptance is collective intentionality, assigning the functionof money to this paper is the assignment of function, people together counting this paperas money is the rule of construction. The function of money have to be represented by"100", the form of this representation is in the broadest sense linguistic. Society iscomposed an organic whole by deontology, not the physical structure.Through the analysis of Searle's social ontology, this paper draws some conclusions: The first, the social reality is objected subjectivity meanings. The collective intentionalityis the guarantee of this objectivity. The other is that the construction of social reality needsthe representation of linguistic. The process of the creation of institutional fact is also theprocess of linguistic representation. Therefore, intentionality and language is the keyelements of social reality.On the base of this understanding, the author improves an alternative conception ofinstitutional reality: Institutional reality is the structure of deontology in middle of rules.According to this new conception, the change of society could be defined as the changesof the deontology's structure. Action not only has to abide the presently rules, but alsoimplicates the possibility of reconstruction of the new rules. Therefore, the social changedepends on the reflection of the rules. The path of China society's modernity isparticularly, it is very different of western's. The history of China's reform can be seen asthe process of ceaseless reinterpretation of Marxism. In conclusion, the article figures outthat the success of social change in China relies on the establishment of the newdeontology's structure.Except the preface, all the dissertation is made up of four chapters. The first chapterintroduces and remarks Searle's main idea about the construction of social reality. Thesecond chapter discusses the collective intentionality which as the pre-conditionalconception of social action. The third chapter argues the theory of speech act. Speech actcould create institutional fact by saying a sentence in appropriate context. The fourthchapter analyses the innovations and limitations about Searle's philosophy of society. Inconclusion, the author reflects the modernization road of Chinese society.