statementsis

Statementsis is a term in philosophy of language and discourse analysis that designates the study of declarative statements as central units of communication. The field examines what counts as a statement, how statements assert information, and how their truth-conditions and commitments are shaped by context, purpose, and speaker attitude. The name combines 'statement' with the suffix '-sis,' signaling a systematic branch of inquiry rather than a single theory.

Core concerns include the nature of assertion, the distinction between a claim and the speaker’s belief, and how context changes truth-requirements for a given sentence. Researchers investigate how negation, modality, evidentiality, and perspective influence the status of a statement within an utterance or text. Methodologically, statementsis draws on truth-conditional semantics, speech-act theory, pragmatics, and empirical methods such as discourse analysis and experiments in judgment.

Historically, statementsis is a relatively recent development, proposed in the early 2010s as a syntheses of formal semantics with discourse-oriented approaches. It aims to provide a uniform lens for evaluating statements across genres—from everyday talk to legal and scientific discourse—without prescribing a single normative standard for truth or justification.

Applications span natural language processing, argumentation theory, education, and policy analysis, where isolating statements and their statuses helps model understanding and evaluation of arguments. Critics note that the term can be vague and that its boundaries overlap with established fields such as semantics, pragmatics, and epistemology.

See also: semantics, pragmatics, speech act theory, discourse analysis, argumentation theory.