Leadership in crisis response has traditionally been strongly centralized and hierarchical. Top-down command and control is popular, because a strict hierarchy and clear lines of command enable rapid decision-making and coordinated actions. Critics, however, have argued that centralization is both impossible and undesirable during crises, because leaders lack situational awareness and cannot control frontline responders from a distance. They argue that operational personnel should take charge to ensure an adaptive frontline response, potentially at the cost of efficiency and speed. The operational dilemma of crisis leadership revolves therefore around the tension between centralization and decentralization. To deal with this dilemma, it is useful to study how influence is exercised and power circulates during crises. Rather than a static authority structure, different types and phases of crises require different forms of leadership. Authority structures have to be tested and adjusted throughout the response, so they can be continuously co-constructed by frontline responders and operational leaders, as the complex and dynamic crisis situation evolves.

Chapter 6 introduces the concepts relevant to speech act theory and discusses difficulties in the study of speech acts, both limitations of the form-to-function approach and obstacles to the function-to-form approach; it then reviews the work-arounds suggested in the literature, including the use of illocutionary-force-indicative devices, of typical syntactic patterns for different speech acts, and of metacommunicative labels. After looking at several studies of performative verbs, the chapter then reviews historical studies of directive, commissive, and expressive speech acts in English. Directives in earlier English would seem to be more direct than we find today, but this can be attributed to the more fixed social structure, not to less politeness. Apologies, curses, greetings, and leave-takings represent expressives that have undergone change in the history of English, in respect to both their formal expression and their functional profile, that is, the very nature of the speech act itself. For example, promises of medieval times, which did not depend upon the sincerity condition of the speaker but were nevertheless “binding,” now rest fundamentally upon this condition.

Ancient Greek does not have a term equivalent to ‘please’ and the bare imperative is used for requests. The understanding of Ancient Greek can benefit from a comparison with some modern languages where the equivalent to ‘please’ is either more restricted in use (Modern Greek) or absent (Danish): these two languages have different strategies (diminutives for Modern Greek, particles for Danish) in the case of routine interactions where the aim is to signal to the interlocutor that the request is expected in the context.

The aim of the chapter is to evaluate the role of the particle δή in such a function of de-dramatization and trivialization of the potentially threatening speech act, through a corpus study in dialogical texts of the classical period (comedies of Aristophanes, philosophical dialogues of Plato). The study shows that this post-positive particle can function as a positive politeness marker (in Brown and Levinson’s sense), to signal a weakly threatening or expected request in the context.

The distinct style of human communication develops gradually during a child’s life course. Researchers have reported that caregivers often try to involve young children in culturally and historically developed interaction patterns. Together with colleagues, I conducted a longitudinal study of Japanese caregiver (mainly parents and siblings) – child (0 to 5 years old) interactions naturally occurring at home, focusing on the developmental transition whereby children’s responses become behavioural patterns that meet caregivers’ expectations. The topics of study included managing attention in child pointing and the caregiver’s response, generating morality while caregivers issue directives (i.e. making their children do something), and caregivers’ strategies for eliciting storytelling from toddlers. Based on these findings, I argue that family interactions provide the foundation for children’s language socialization. Moreover, I explore possible ways that caregivers and nursery or preschool teachers can establish a link between family life and educational settings for children in their care. The recommended practices are summarized as (1) caregivers should communicate to teachers about their child’s recent behavioural accomplishments (e.g. pointing); (2) caregivers and teachers should share a list of directives they have used and the child’s responses to them, and so on.

Incentivising the use of multi-tier dispute resolution in the EU raises challenges. An underlying statute (the EU Mediation Directive) has been promulgated to encourage greater acceptance of mediation, but field responses have varied. This chapter addresses key issues for the future of mediation and hybrid dispute resolution in the EU. Insofar as hybrid dispute resolution is underdeveloped or not much used in the EU, the chapter identifies reasons for such situation. Most issues with hybrid dispute resolution contracts in the EU stem from the lack of an enforcement regime for such agreements. The chapter thus addresses the question whether, assuming that a greater use of hybrid dispute resolution is a good thing, measures can be taken to increase resort to hybrid dispute resolution in the EU. The chapter also examines concerns expressed over procedural defects in the use of multi-tier modes of dispute resolution and what (if any) safeguards have been put in place by different member states to remedy those defects. Finally, this chapter considers the extent to which (if at all) the EU should become party to the Singapore Convention and whether the Convention would make any difference to the position today in respect of multi-tier dispute resolution. Is the EU likely to join the Singapore Convention? Most issues pertaining to enforcement of multi-tier dispute resolution contracts would be resolved if the EU were to become a Contracting State. That is because the Singapore Convention would provide a harmonised basis for enforcing settlement agreements among EU member states, which is an objective of the EU Mediation Directive. Joining the Singapore Convention will, however, depend upon its compatibility with EU law. Insofar as it is competent to join, there would be clear benefit to the EU in so doing.

Here, we look at a number of syntactic differences that are used for different pragmatic purposes, specifically the characteristic but imperfect relations between the following clause types and speech acts: declarative clauses for making statements, closed interrogative clauses for asking closed questions, open interrogative clauses for asking open questions, imperative clauses for issuing commands, and exclamative clauses for uttering exclamations. These relations exist for both main and subordinate clauses.

Declarative clauses are the basic clause type that we’ve been describing so far. Interrogatives have a number of characteristics differences, including subject–auxiliary inversion and the use of interrogative words and fronting of the interrogative phrase in open interrogatives. The exclamatives are always marked by an initial exclamative phrase that begins with either adjective ‘what’ or adverb ‘how’. Imperatives characteristically lack a subject and use the plain form of the verb. We conclude with a brief description of a few minor clause types.

The chapter provides an overview of the complex and vast legal framework that the EU has adopted in recent decades to protect victims of crime in the Area of Freedom, Security and Justice, especially from the point of view of procedural rights. Particular attention is paid to both relevant CJEU case law and the stance taken by national legal systems at the time of implementing EU minimum standards. The chapter also examines the impact of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU on the standard and scope of the rights of victims. The final part of the chapter looks to the future, evoking some developments that will hopefully be introduced in the next few years to compensate for the lack of effectiveness that, in many cases, still characterises the rights of victims within the AFSJ.

Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.

Jary and Kissine examine the meaning of imperative sentences, taking the existing relevance-theoretic semantic analysis, in terms of the desirability and potentiality of the described state of affairs, as their point of departure. In their view, a complete account of the interpretation of imperatives has to explain how they can result in the addressee forming an intention to perform an action, and this requires the theory to make room for ‘action representations’ (in addition to factual representations, such as assumptions). They claim that the imperative form is uniquely specified to interface with such action representations.