John Rogers Searle is an American philosopher, a representative of the analytic philosophy who was born in 1932 in Denver to a family of a business executive and a physician. At the period of the Second World the family moved from city to city, but finally settled in Wisconsin. [1]
Searle's higher education started at the University of Wiskonsin, but during his junior year he received Rhodes Scholarship, an international award for students to study at University of Oxford. Studying in Britain John Searle obtained Bachelor's and Master's degrees, and afterwards received his DPhil. In 1959 he left Oxford. [1]
Being a professor of the University of Clifornia and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, this scholar made a great contribution to multiple subject areas, for example, epistemology, ontology, the philosophy of social institutions and etc. [2]
Searle is a versatile person, but his greatest contribution to the science of linguistics was the speech act theory. The scholar was engaged in developing the theory throughout more than ten years in 1960-1970-s. [5]
Searle's mentor at Oxford University, J.L. Austin, was strongly against the philosophical ideas of representatives of logical positivism, who singled out only one purpose of language: production of descriptive utterances which were correct or incorrect according to the reality. Such conception was considered incomplete and inconsistent by Austin and his adherent John Searle. [2]
The descriptive ability of certain sentences in actual fact does not encompass the full range of functions performed by language. [5] Besides, speech is a very complex process. Therefore Searle and Austin's perception of language and speech included various factors: speaker, interlocutor, their interaction and intentions. Their speech act theory drew scholars' attention to new phenomena of language, for instance, relations between implicit and explicit purposes of the utterance, use of speech tactics and etc. [3]
One of the greatest contributions made by John Searle' to communicative linguistics is a classification of speech acts. It is based on the notion of illocutionary functions and includes six groups:
1) constantives are speech acts describing the situation and stating the facts, e.g.: the economy has collapsed;
2) commissives are speech acts expressing speaker's promise: I'll conquer the world for you;
3) directives are speech acts performing the function of inducement and motivation e.g.: close the door, stop the music;
4) expressives are speech acts demonstrating speaker's emotions and feelings (gratitude, apology and etc.) e.g.: I'm sorry for disturbing you;
5) declaratives are speech acts expressing change of interlocutor's status, e.g.: I declare you husband and wife;
6) interrogatives are speech acts of request: Where is the Red Square? [3]
In 1980-s John Searle devoted himself to the philosophy of artificial intelligence. His most famous work in the given subject area was an experiment called «Chinese room». [2]
John Searle's researches are very fruitful. This scholar made valuable discoveries and introduced new ideas to linguistics and other sciences.
Списокиспользуемойлитературы:
Джон Роджерс Сёрль [Электронный ресурс] - режим доступа: https://gtmarket.ru/personnels/john-searle (дата обращения: 18.12.2020)
Джон Сёрль: сознание, мозг и наука [Электронный ресурс] - режим доступа: https://gtmarket.ru/library/basis/6662 (дата обращения: 19.12.2020)
Маслова В.А. Современные направления лингвистики. Москва: Издательский центр «Академия», 2008
Context Reverso [Электронный ресурс]. - Режим доступа: https://context.reverso.net/%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BE%D0%B4/ (дата обращения: 16.12.20)
John Searle [Электронный ресурс]. - Режим доступа: https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Searle (дата обращения: 18.12.20)
Multitran [Электронный ресурс]. - Режим доступа: https://www.multitran.com/ (дата обращения: 17.12.20)