John R. Searle And Literary Theory

This paper is a study in history of ideas which focuses on the original speaking occasions and intentions of several key persons who are considered as distinguished thinkers and try to learn more about the famous western philosopher of languages, John Searle, who once raised quite unusual issues on the essence of fictional discourse and had debates against many literary theorists.Speech-Act Theory from which Searle abstracted concepts to analyze fictional discourse was built by J. L. Austin who was the leader of "Oxford Philosophy". Searle developed Austin’s thought and subsequently pointed out that fictional discourse is "pretend" and "parasitic" illocutionary act. By reading and comparing the multiple reviews and researches by literary critics closely, my paper derives Searle’s central consciousness of questions and its Aristotelian philosophical root-the theory of mimetic. Those critics who quoted Searle’s ideas partly to construct new systems of theory of reader-response and therefore distorted or ignored Searle’s original intentions could be revealed as supporters of modern anti-realism of philosophy.When the opinion above meets the contemporary phenomenon of "Theory Wars", there may be very distinct clue that the quarrel between Searle and Derrida is a continuation of the conflict between realism and nominalism which once happened during the Ancient Greek and Late Medieval periods. This quarrel has never met an end for its complicated war-like background about humanities and politics.Finally this paper wants to declare that1) before we interpret or "use" a theory we need to be aware of its limits and go back to the contexts to clarify its intentions and presuppositions;2) to choose Searle’s standpoint of correspondence theory of truth or to enjoy Derrida’s deconstructional political strategy of text-rewriting games is depended on the theorist’s belief (or unbelief) on the certainty of reason and truth;3) Searle’s view has lots of common features with Chinese traditional cannons’thoughts.