Language and Society in John Searles Thought

Since the linguistic turn in the Western philosophy, language turned into a central subject in philosophical studies and researches. The view that considered language merely as a device for communication was replaced by a view based on which language was not only a device for transferring thoughts, but rather the founding element of thought itself, i.e. our understanding of realities, and even underlying the existence of realities. Society as one of the most important factors in the relationship between language and the world has always been discussed by philosophers, and its existence has been considered as relying upon language. What has been, however, less debated is a precise analysis of the role of language in the formation of society and how social realities are dependent upon language from a philosophical point of view. John Searle, the contemporary analytical philosopher of mind and language, is the most prominent – or at least one of the most prominent – philosophers dealing with this subject. In Searle’s works, one may find at least two explanations for this issue. The main purpose of the present article is to investigate them.