Analysis of John Searle's Early Theory of Meaning in Speech Acts

Abstract

The main body of this paper is John Searle's early theory of meaning. The problem of meaning is one of the basic issues that western language philosophers focus on. Searle's early theory of meaning in his Speech Acts is based on the criticism and inheritance of Austin's
speech act theory and Grice's theory of meaning. And his early theory of meaning is based on his speech act theory. He believes that speech
act is the basic unit or the minimum unit of language communication, and that speaking a language is to carry out a behavioral mode governed by rules. Searle's early theory of meaning in his Speech Acts is modified and completed on the viewpoint of Grice. He adopts the same
perspective of analyzing meaning as Grice, and both will base on the communication intention, that is, the speech act is meaningful because
the speaker intends to communicate with the listener. At the same time, he also criticizes Grice's theory of meaning from two aspects, and proposes that when analyzing the act, we must cover both intention and regulation, especially the relationship between the two and the two views
that saying something and indicating that it is intended to perform the act. Finally, he formed his early theory of meaning, which is that the
meaning of speakers lies in the intention of speakers to produce the effect of speech, and the meaning of sentences depends on constructive
rules. In his later work, Intentionality, he developed his speech act theory, shifted the focus of his research to the philosophy of mind, and put
forward the concept of intentionality. His theory of meaning also developed into a more mature theory of intentionality.