Iraqi EFL University Students’ Linguistic Strategies in Approaching Warning and Prohibition

This paper aims at detecting Iraqi EFL students’ ability in recognizing and producing the speech acts of warning and prohibition, finding the reasons behind their failure and attempting to find possible solutions. The data are responses of 60 fourth year Iraqi EFL college students who participated to answer a two-part test of recognition and production. It is hypothesized that the Iraqi EFL learners commit more errors in producing SAs of warning and prohibition than recognizing these two SAs, they find more difficulty in handling the SA of prohibition than of warning, they show a tendency towards using a particular strategy to express the SAs of warning and prohibition, and they also confuse the SAs of warning and prohibition with other relevant SAs at the recognition and production levels. The paper concludes that Iraqi EFL learners recognize warning expressions better than those conveying prohibition. They also show sufficient awareness in issuing warning strategies in various situations. By contrast, they display a poor awareness of using various strategies in performing the SA of prohibition. Furtherly, the students’ level in recognizing the SAs of warning and prohibition is higher than their level in producing these SAs. Correspondingly, in producing the SAs of warning, Iraqi EFL learners show a higher preference for using negative imperative, modals and if-conditional strategies more than other types in most of the situations, whereas in communicating the SA of prohibition, they employ negative imperatives and modals more than any other construction.


3). a. Smoking is prohibited in public places. b. Parking is strictly forbidden between these gates.
Like warning, prohibition can also be expressed implicitly. For example: 4). a. Don't disturb! b. Keep out.

The Problem
The H of the following utterance, for example, might get confused whether it is warning or prohibitions:

5). You can't park here.
It is not obvious whether the S in (5) is trying to warn or prohibit the H. This confusion between warning and prohibition may lead students to overlap them. One can also argue that advanced Iraqi EFL students find difficulty in handling these two SAs. Therefore, a study is needed to the bridging of this gap.

Rationale of the Study
Generally speaking, the types of previous studies conducted with respect to warning and prohibition deal with each SA individually. Besides, other studies are comparative between two languages especially in religious texts. Moreover, by surveying the practical type of studies, it has been found that there has been no one practical study which directly relates the two SAs of warning and prohibition to students' ability to differentiate between the two SAs in question. Cases in point are the following: Kadhim (2012) compares between the warning and threat acts in two languages. Al-Shafie and Al-Jubbory (2015) investigate the use of warning and threatening by Iraqi EFL learners in situational dialogues. Al-Saaidi, Al-Shaibani and Al-Husseini (2013) conduct a contrastive study of prohibition in two languages based on selected Biblical and Quranic Verses. Betti, Igaab and Al-Ghizzi (2018) compare prohibition to permission and obligation as used by Iraqi EFL learners. It is clear that there are differences between this study and the above-mentioned studies.
According to Creswell (2012), a problem should be researched if the study will fill a gap or void in the existing literature. Therefore, this study will cover a topic which is, according to the researchers' best knowledge, not addressed in the published literature so far despite the noticeable affiliation between these two SAs that remains a challenge for EFL learners and scholastic researchers. The absence of practical studies with respect to warning vis-à-vis prohibition in relation to EFL learners' performance in particular has led the researchers to investigate the two SAs to illustrate the points of similarity and difference between these two SAs, and to investigate the ability of advanced Iraqi EFL learners to differentiate between the two SAs in English.

Aims, Hypotheses, Limits, and Value
This study aims at detecting Iraqi EFL learners' ability in recognizing and producing the SAs of warning and prohibition, finding the reasons behind students' failure and attempting to find possible solutions, and exploring the main strategies that Iraqi EFL learners employ in performing the SAs of warning and prohibition in particular situations. These three objectives can be carried out through the following hypotheses: 1) Students commit more errors in producing SAs of warning and prohibition than recognizing these two SAs.
2) Iraqi EFL college students find more difficulty in handling the SA of prohibition than of warning.
3) Iraqi EFL learners show a tendency towards using a particular strategy to express the SAs of warning and prohibition, i.e. directly by employing negative imperative constructions or indirectly by employing modals than other strategies. 4) They also confuse the SAs of warning and prohibition with other relevant SAs at the recognition and production levels.
This study is limited to the pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic analysis of the SAs of warning and prohibition as recognized and produced by Iraqi EFL college students. It derives its value from its attempt to bridge a gap in the literature on the overlapping between the SAs of warning and prohibition. It is expected that the Iraqi EFL college students will learn the SAs of warning and prohibition better if they know their different forms and usages. This study is also of benefit to Iraqi EFL teachers as well as researchers in the field of linguistics who are interested in the various applications of the SAs theory. The procedures in this study are: 1) Designing a test of recognition and production to be administrated to a sample of Iraqi EFL college fourth-year students of Mustansiriyah University, College of Arts, Department of English, 2) Conducting data collection and analysis based on the responses of the students, elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 11, No. 12;2018 13 3) Identifying the strategies followed by the subjects and specifying the difficulty and errors in their performing of the SAs of warning and prohibition, 4) Finding reasons and causes behind student's failure in recognizing and producing the SAs of warning and prohibition, and 5) Drawing results, conclusions, recommendation and suggestions for further studies.

Warning vs Prohibition
Prohibitions are apparently directive according to Searle's (1969) definition, whereas warning is partly, but not primarily, representative. Searle (1969) confirms that the distinction between illocutionary force indicators (IFIDs) and proposition indicators is very useful in constructing an analysis of illocutionary acts (such as warning and prohibition). However, distinguishing a certain SA from another is somehow pragmatically problematic as Quirk et al. (1985) stress that it is not always likely to make a clear-cut distinction because the illocutionary force varies depending on the relative authority of S and H and on the relative benefits of action (A) to each. However, depending on the features of both warning and prohibition, it seems that the following are the most evident principles by which, warning and prohibition can be recognized: 2.1.1 Intentionality and Purpose.
According to Searle (1992), the form of the utterance:

6). Do you think this is a parking space?
may be used for different SAs, depending on S and H and on the actual circumstances. If uttered by a car owner to a passer-by, it may be a simple request for information; if uttered by a policeman, it might be a warning; and if uttered by the farmer on whose land H's car is parked, it might be a prohibition. In all these cases the actual form of the utterance is irrelevant. What count are the conditions, the situation, the intentions and so on.

Authority and Power
Lyons (1977), Allan (1986) and Eastwood (2002) assure the fact that in issuing prohibition, S should have the authority or power to impose his will upon the H. For example, in:

7). Students must not use dictionaries in the examination.
S is the authority, the person who feels the necessity to stop the use of dictionaries. Thus, when prohibiting, Ss necessarily have some authority over their Hs (Searle & Vanderveken, 1985). On the other hand, warning is invitational (negative advise) (Allan, 1986) which is only intended to inform H about an unfavourable state (Fraser, 1998). Consider the utterance:

8). Walking alone at night is dangerous.
In (8), the S only gives H nonmandatory information about a dangerous situation.

Optionality
This principle is essential in distinguishing warning from prohibition. In the prohibition case, H has no space of optionality to do or not to do A. This is due to the instructive nature of prohibitions, i.e., they are non-negotiable utterances according to which S restricts H's option and freedom (Allan, 1986), and thus threatens H's NF (Brown & Levinson,1987), whereas in warning, the case is different where H has optionality to heed or not (Crystal, 2010). This means that warning belongs to the negotiable directives, i.e., does not impose an instruction, which is against the nature of prohibition. To illustrate this meaning, consider (9) and (10) (Goddard & Wierzbicka, 2013).

Cost-Benefit Scale
The fourth principle is the cost-benefit standard, i.e. SA being beneficial/costly to either S or H. Psychologically, warning is an act that is used to warn people from certain bad things. Thus, if a S tells a H to refrain from a behavior which will enable him to easily and directly achieve a goal, then the H makes a cost-benefit analysis and depends on certain psychological factors to accept this warning (Green, 2013). This means that in warning, H is the beneficiary. In prohibition, S is the benefit recipient (Haverkate, 1984).

Politeness and Social Factors
People use the indirect SA because of the view that considers it more polite especially in certain societies (Finch, elt.ccsenet.org English Language Teaching Vol. 11, No. 12;2018. According to Brown and Levinson (1987), warning is the case where "doing the FTA is primarily in H's interest", and therefore, no face redress is necessary (ibid). However, prohibition is highly FTA as it impedes the addressee's freedom (Allan, 1986;Brown & Levinson, 1987); it projects S's power status and authoritativeness and stresses the inequality of power between S and H. Further, politeness is associated with different illocutionary acts since its maxims such as ''Generosity, Tact, Approbation and Modesty'' are applied to different contexts.

11)
. You must not come late. 12). I cannot lend you my car.
The two examples above have the IF of prohibition, which are supposed to be more polite for two reasons: (a) because ''they imply benefit to H, and (b) because they imply cost to speaker'' (ibid).
2.1.5 Illocutionary Force Indicating Devices (IFIDs) Searle (1969) suggests that IFs can be defined by providing, for each A, necessary and sufficient conditions for the performance of A. Certain syntactic and semantic devices, such as mood and explicit performative verbs, are employed to realize the IF. Searle (1969) also asserts that there is a regulation to the uptake that the IFID can only be communicated if felicity conditions (FCs) are satisfied. Similarly, Yule (1996) asserts that the H can recognize the speaker's intended illocutionary force (IF) by considering two things: IFIDs and FCs.  Table 1 above along with the previous discussion manifest that the following points, shown in Table (2) below, can be followed in distinguishing the SAs of warning and prohibition:  11, No. 12;2018 FTA (damages NF) X X Note. FTA =Face Threatening Act; NF= Negative Face.

A Model Analysis of the SAs of Warning and Prohibition's Strategies
Depending on the aims of this study, a two-dimensional model, i.e. pragmalinguistic and sociopragmatic, is required to measure the performance of Iraqi EFL performance of the SAs of warning and prohibition in order to get at a corresponding pragmatic analysis in English. The researchers will apply Searle's version of SA theory amalgamated with the warning and prohibition features supported by Haverkate (1984), Brown and Levinson (1987), and Allan (1986). Such applicable amalgamated model can be used for the identification of each SA in terms of the situational factors influencing the choice of language and the description of its linguistic realization in English. Thus, this model will consist of: sociopragmatic distinctive method and pragmalinguistic realization scheme. The two components of the model will be incorporated with the aforementioned features ( Table 2) which illustrate the pragmatic values that have been found to be criterial in the discrimination of the SAs of warning and prohibition. This model which is constituted from different theories, styles, ideas and cases can be a useful instrument to obtain a systematic awareness of the SAs of warning and prohibition.

Brown and Levinson's (1979) Model (Sociopragmatic Model)
Since Brown and Levinson's (1979) account of the situational factors influencing the choice of language has a prominent place in many empirical types of research, their factors (ibid), i.e. status (STAT), the social distance (SD) and the relative power (REL. P.) will be the base of building up the situations (Sit.) of the test of the practical part of this study, i.e. Sit. Type A, Sit. Type B, and Sit. Type C as clarified below: Sit. Type A -Status, i.e., whether S is superior, inferior or equal to H in position, Sit. Type B -Social Distance, i.e., whether the H is familiar or non-familiar to S, and Sit. Type C -Power, i.e. whether S addresses H with/without solidarity.

A Model of the Analysis of the SAs of Warning and Prohibition's Strategies (Pragmalinguistic Model)
According to Wolfson (1989), studying SAs of an L2 requires an accurate understanding of the linguistic possibilities available in that language for SAs realization. Thus, the second component of the adopted model will include a collection of the linguistic strategies of of warning and prohibition for the analysis of the data of the subjects'performance of each SA. Diagram (7) below summarizes the linguistic strategies that are considered by prominent scholars of linguistics to realize the SAs of warning and prohibition in English. elt.ccsenet.o

Subjec
The study College of native spe students is

Test
In order to and produc fourth-yea on the 4 th o  11, No. 12;2018 required to distinguish SAs of warning and prohibition from another related speech acts namely advising, requesting, commanding and threatening which are furtherly included in extra five situations. The subjects are required to choose the correct choice from a variety of four options.
The second part of the test is intended to elicit information about the students' abilities, at the production level, to issue the SAs of warning and prohibition according to specific contextual factors. Thus, it is introduced as an elicitation procedure (Corder, 1982). This part contains twenty situations. The respondents, therefore, are asked to issue the SAs of warning and prohibition according to different situations. This is done deliberately to identify the most common strategies used by them to express the SAs of warning and prohibition.
According to Geis (2006), social ranks and positions are critical to determining what communicative action the initiator means to engage the responder in. Therefore, situations in both parts of the test are adopted from various sources according to Brown and Levinson's (1979) contextual factors:

Sits. Type B: A superior S talks to a familiar H without solidarity
Sits. Type C: A S talks to an equal and familiar H with solidarity

Test Validity and Reliability
The test requires two essential characteristics, i.e., validity and reliability; otherwise, the accuracy statements about it will be questionable (Hatch & Farhady, 1982).  (Crocker & Algina, 1986). It depends on a hypothetical basis for presuming if a test measures all domain of a standard.
A test is said to have content validity once it contains suitable items that are carefully selected. Items are selected in order to meet the test requirement which is formulated through a careful study of the subject domain (ibid). To ensure content validity, the test is carefully built to give no room for examining the SAs save for the ones intended to be included, i.e., SAs of warning and prohibition and differentiating them from other related ones like commanding, advising, requesting, and threatening. As for face validity, it is associated with the way the test seems to the learners, test administrators and so on (Harris, 1969). To achieve this objective, the test was revised by a jury of experts (See Appendix B).
Test reliability denotes the extent according to which a test remains constant and firm in order to obtain the required findings. When the test is consistent with itself throughout the time, it is called a reliable test. This means that reliability can be achieved once its scores remain relatively stable on repeated attempts, i.e., from one administration to another (Harrison, 1983). One method of estimating test reliability is test-retest (Harris, 1969). Thus, a sample of the subjects was exposed to the test twice within three days. This sample involved twenty-five randomly selected students in their fourth-year of Department of English, College of Arts, Mustansiriyah University.
The correlation between the scores of the two tests was calculated by using the Kuder-Richardson formula: where R= reliability N= the number of items in the test m= the mean of the test score X= the standard deviation of the test scores The computation of the results has shown that the reliability of the test amounted to (83%) which is a highly positive correlation (Heaton, 1988).

Scoring Scheme
Scoring scheme is the way according to which the obtained results are appropriately interpreted, thus, to ensure an objective scoring of the test; a scoring scheme has been adopted. Each participant, in part 1, is required to choose elt.ccsenet.org Vol. 11, No. 12;2018 only one correct option at the recognition level. Scores are equally distributed over the items of Part 1 and 2, i.e., the recognition and production level. Two marks are given to each correct answer and zero mark for the incorrect one. Spelling mistakes are ignored. The items that are left without response by the subjects are also given zero mark because they give the impression that the subjects fail to provide the appropriate answer. To measure the central tendency of the subjects, the basic calculations of percentage has been adopted as a statistical device to find out the mean score. In this respect, Butler (1985: 30) mentions that the mean score is the average subject response to an item. It is formed by adding up the number of the correct answers of all subjects for the item and dividing that total by the number of the subjects. Moreover, Mousavi (1999: 213) states that the mean is the most commonly used and most generally valid measure of the central tendency of a distribution. He illustrates that in the following formula: which is usually written as X ҇ = Ʃ N where X҇ = the mean, X = raw score, Ʃ = the sum of, N = the number of subjects.
The results of the subjects' responses at this level are rendered into percentages, according to the below formula, which are then compared with each other.

Number of correct responses per item × 100
60 (number of subjects) = 100%

Pilot Study
The significance of the pilot study is that it illustrates the required time to respond to the items of the test and discloses the effects in individual items that are not noticed in writing the test. In order to examine the efficiency of data collecting method, the suitability of the situations as well as investigating any gaps that may affect the appropriate application of the data collection instrument, a random sample consisting of a twenty five students was exposed to the test in advance on the 25th of February 2018.

Administration of the Test
The main test was carried out on the 4th of March 2018. The subjects were given 90 minutes. When the students are seated for the test, they were precisely informed on how to respond to the test items. What they were required to do in answering the test questions was demonstrated to them in English and sometimes in Arabic particularly when needed, as recommended by Olshtain and Cohen (1983) who believe that the respondents' native language should be used to make them fully understand what they are required to do. Besides, they (ibid) think that giving instructions in the L2 may bias the subjects towards using particular expressions, the matter which undoubtedly affects the results of the study. Further, they were informed that the test is intended to collect data devoted for research aims and that it will not affect their marks. To save time and effort, they were requested to respond on the test sheet. To avoid any inconvenience, they were informed not to write their names on the test paper save their age and gender.

Data Analysis
This section describes the responses of the subjects in recognizing the SAs of warning and prohibition (Part One) and producing them (Part Two). Then, the recognition results of the SA of warning are compared to its production results. The same procedure is used with prohibition. After that, the overall performance of warning, i.e. recognition and production, is ultimately compared to that of prohibition. Table 3 below illustrates that recognizing the SAs of warning and prohibition realized by the indirect constructions is more difficult than recognizing these two SAs when realized by the direct ones because the IFIDs are not sufficient engough. This is supported by the percentage of the mean score of the direct constructions for both SAs which is (79%) in comparison to that of the indirect ones which is (57%).    The last po analysis of prohibition where they

Sit.5-If yo
The overal The studen negative tr org Figure 8. S oint to be con f subjects' resp n strategies to y are asked to p  Vol. 11,No. 12; d SAs of prohibition mit errors by u subjects' respo rning. Conside ibition igure 9 below: on can be due t t EFL Iraqi stud 2018 . The using onses er the to the dents employ when attempting to communicate or express the SAs of warning and prohibition. Another factor is that of lexical competence. Most subjects use almost the same or nearly identical constructions to express the SAs of warning and prohibition despite the differences between the given situations. This indicates their limited lexical repertoire that can help them manipulate the choices of linguistic strategies. It can be also said that this confusion is due to the sociopragmatic knowledge that most students lack. This knowledge is mainly attributed to the appropriateness of meaning in terms of the social and cultural contexts in which the SAs are used.

Subjects' Awareness of Social Factors
As far as the SD is concerned, (65.21%) of the learners tend to express the SA of warning utilizing indirect constructions in the situations of Types A and B, whereas, in Type C situations, only (36.65%) of them employ the indirect strategies. This indicates that considerable numbers of the subjects are competent users who can cope well with most of the situations in handling the SA of warning with regard to SD. However, the subjects will have occasional misunderstanding especially when warning is overlapped with prohibition.
On the other hand, in expressing the SA of prohibition, the learners behave similarly; in other words, they mostly tend to employ the indirect constructions in the situations of Types A and B which amount to (34%) is in contrary with their prohibitive behaviour when using the direct strategies which amount to (11%). However, in Type C situations the subjects behave differently where they tend to use the indirect prohibitive constructions which amount to (38.73%), whereas their employment of the direct strategies amount to a poor percentage of (8.33%).
The subjects' poor percentage in producing the SA of prohibition in accordance with SD could be due to their limited lexical, syntactic and semantic knowledge of the proper strategies in expressing the SA of prohibition in such circumstances. The most important reason to be mentioned with respect to the subjects' failure in handling the SA of prohibition can be linked to the early stages of learning English where warning and prohibition are treated as an identical phenomenon.

Findings
The significant conclusions obtained from this study are: 1) The SA of warning can be distinguished from the SA of prohibition according to particular contextual factors. These factors are: Intentionality and purpose, authority and power, optionality, cost-benefit scale, politeness and social factors, and illocutionary force indicating Devices (IFIDs) 2) Iraqi EFL learners' ability to produce both SAs of warning and prohibition is found lower than their ability in recognizing these SAs. This verifies the first hypothesis of the study.
3) The learners have displayed sufficient awareness in identifying and issuing most types of strategies in their performance of the SA of warning in various situations. By contrast, they have shown poor awareness of handling all types of strategies in performing the SA of prohibition. These accords with the second hypothesis. 4) In producing the SAs of warning and prohibition, Iraqi EFL learners show a higher preference for using negative imperative, modals and if-conditional strategies more than other types in most of the situations, whereas in communicating the SA of prohibition, they employ negative imperatives and modals more than any other construction. This verifies the third hypothesis of this study. 5) Iraqi EFL learners also confuse the SAs of warning and prohibition by using other relevant SAs at the recognition and production levels; i.e. using commanding and requesting to communicate prohibition or threatening and advising to convey warning. This confirms the fourth hypothesis. 6) Iraqi EFL learners often resort to the sociocultural norms when they are required to produce the SAs of warning, whereas in producing the SA of prohibition, they are often found to deviate from these norms. This is obvious in their responses to the various situation of A, and C. This indicates that the students are linguistically unaware of the conventions, norms and resources used to express the SA of prohibiting in L2. 7) Mostly, the contextual factors have no significant influence on the learners' choice of the different strategies of the SAs of warning and prohibition. It is found that Iraqi EFL learners are not well acquainted with the factors influencing the choice of language, i.e. Status, Social Distance and Power.
8) The learners' success in identifying the intended SAs of warning and prohibition depends mostly on the degree of the explicitness of the expression used. The more explicit the expression is, the more successful the learners are in recognizing the intended SA. 9) In most of prohibitive situations, Iraqi female EFL learners' behaviour is sometimes characterised by the presence of politeness, i.e. they mostly use "please" either at the beginning or the end of the prohibitive construction. Likewise, they also show a high preference for using backup and justification phrases when issuing the SA of warning and prohibition.
10) Most of the utterances produced by EFL students in expressing warning and prohibiting are pragmatically transfered from Iraqi utterances used in spoken situations utilised in everyday Iraqi situations.

Recommendations
1) It is crucial to help the learners develop awareness for using all types of strategies to express SAs of warning and prohibition and to put choices that are more appropriate at their disposal. The student's syntactic and semantic knowledge should be enhanced and developed by teachers in order to help students produce pragmatically acceptable utterances through practising these various strategies specifically used to express the SAs of warning and prohibition.
2) Promote knowledge of how SAs of warning and prohibition work by constructing a model performance of the SAs of warning and prohibition as they might be realized under differing conditions. on how those two SAs are performed by members of one or more communities of practice within a given speech community (for example, at the workplace, making warning and prohibition by people of the same age, understanding warning and prohibition made by people of higher status and so on).
3) In an effort to avoid pragmatic failure, the learner may identify the sociopragmatic norms for performance of the SAs of warning and prohibition in the target speech community, i.e. the conventional formula that tend to be used with the SAs of warning and prohibition in certain situations (e.g., whether a warning/prohibition is issued with a justification, mitigation, conversational principles, etc.

4)
Iraqi EFL learner's repertoire should be enriched with the lexical competence used to represent the SAs of warning and prohibition (e.g. when it is appropriate to use imperatives, negative imperatives, modals, brief announcements and so on). EFL learners should be taught that not all warning/prohibition strategies can be said in all circumstances and there should be contextual conditions to using those strategies appropriately.

Suggestions for Further Studies
1) A study can be conducted by exploring the use of the SAs of warning and prohibition in a literary piece such as a novel.
2) A study can be conducted by exploring the use of the warning and prohibition signs in Arabic and English in public places in Iraq.
3) A developmental study can be carried out to show a comparison between native and non-native speakers of English in the performance of the SAs of warning and prohibition. 4) A study can be conducted to demonstrate the contrast between females and male students in the performance of the SAs of warning and prohibition.  Vol. 11, No. 12;2018 Part Two

Production: Strategies Used for Expressing the Speech Acts of Warning and Prohibition
Q// Use the appropriate utterance to issue the speech acts of warning and prohibition according to the following situations: 1) Prohibit your brother from driving without his seat belts on. -