This chapter is concerned with the ontology of a certain class of social entities and the role of language in the creation and maintenance of such entities. The social entities I have in mind are such objects as the $20 bill in my hand, The University of California, and the President of the United States. I also include such facts as that Barack Obama is President of the United States; that the piece of paper I hold in my hand is a $20 bill; and that I am a citizen of the United States. I call such facts “institutional facts,” and it will emerge that the facts are logically prior to the objects (because the object is only institutional if it is created by a certain linguistic operation that creates an institutional fact). Under the concept of social entity, I also mean to include such institutions as money, property, government, and marriage. I believe that where the social sciences are concerned, social ontology is prior to methodology and theory. It is prior in the sense that unless you have a clear conception of the nature of the phenomena you are investigating, you are unlikely to develop the right methodology and the right theoretical apparatus for conducting the investigation.

I have also a polemical aim for wishing to discuss social ontology and that is that I believe we have a long tradition, going back to the ancient Greeks, of misconstruing the role of language in the creation and constitution of social and political reality.