Normativity and Collective Recognition in Searle’s Account of Language and Institutions

Journal title PARADIGMI
Author/s Francesca Di Lorenzo Ajello
Publishing Year 2015 Issue 2015/1
Language Italian Pages 23 P. 155-177 File size 92 KB
DOI 10.3280/PARA2015-001011
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Starting from Searle’s thesis that institutions are created and maintained through collective recognition of status functions according to the logical form of constitutive rules "X counts as Y in C", the author analyses the crucial role of the constitutive rules underlying human linguistic and institutional acting in Searle’s path from Speech Acts to Making the Social World. Making explicit how the types of these constitutive rules are parallel for speech acts and institutional reality, the author aims to derive from them the normative criteria for the rational assessment of institutions and speech acts, showing how they allow us to distinguish rationally motivated collective recognition from tacit acquiescence in totalitarian regimes.

Keywords: Constitutive Rules, Rational Agreement, Searle, Social Ontology, Speech Acts.

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Francesca Di Lorenzo Ajello, Normativity and collective recognition in Searle’s account of language and institutions in "PARADIGMI" 1/2015, pp 155-177, DOI: 10.3280/PARA2015-001011