Language, social reality, and power

John Searle

Abstract

This article analyzes how John Searle explains the establishment or the destruction of conventional power. The starting point is that Searle’s explanation is sustained by the idea of conventional power, understood as a unique accomplishment which becomes a part of the social reality constituted by language, which makes it possible to express that when an act of performative speech is carried out in appropriate circumstances by an agent, it is followed by the imposition of the function of status to the event, the comprehension of the explanatory strength of the constitutive rules, the execution of deontic powers and the creation of a new institutional fact. Nevertheless, such a formulation leaves out the participants’ attitude of risk in the creation or destruction of the powers which constitute the institutional facts. To demonstrate this starting point, in first place, Searle’s philosophical contribution is located above language in terms of pragmatic perspective. In second place, it is shown that [starting] from language, collective intentionality imposes functions of status that create forms of deontic powers. To conclude, it is affirmed that the maintenance or destruction of conventional power is not exhausted in the constituent rules or in the functions of status, but it is rather complemented with the attitude of risk developed by participants in the moment in which they make use of language. The analysis of the information gathered, by means of the critical summary, was carried out by using tools of conceptual reconstructive methodological focus.