How did John Searle connect speech acts to social institutions?

John Searle viewed speech acts as linguistic entities embedded within social settings, serving as a foundation for his philosophy of social institutions. He argued that objective social reality is created through "we-intentions"—collective intentions that are not merely the sum of individual intentions.1

Searle connected these concepts using the constitutive formula: "X counts as Y in context C". By collectively intending that a certain phenomenon (X) functions as a specific social status (Y) within a given context (C), individuals create objective social facts. This process is iterative: the status Y can become the X in a higher-level intention, allowing complex institutions like money, property, and language to be built upon simpler ones.1

For example, an utterance (X) counts as a sentence (Y), which in turn can count as a promise (X) that creates an obligation (Y). Thus, social institutions are essentially maintained by the ongoing collective recognition of these status functions, which are performed and reinforced through speech acts.1