Microsoft Word - smith.doc

1 John Searle: From speech acts to social reality Barry Smith It was in the Oxford of Austin, Ryle and Strawson that John Searle was shaped as a philosopher. It was in Oxford, not least through Austin’s influence and example, that the seeds of the book Speech Acts, Searle’s inaugural opus magnum, were planted.1 And it was in Oxford that Searle acquired many of the characteristic traits that have m