Abstract

The study aims at specifying the different types of directives available in the literature about speech acts; showing their relationship; and investigating the ability of the Iraqi EFL learners to recognize and produce the aforementioned speech acts. To validate the hypotheses of the study, a test is used to measure the ability of the fourth year subjects, at Thi-Qar University, College of Education for humanities, to recognize and produce permission, obligation and prohibition. It is hypothesized that the Iraqi EFL learners’ performance at the recognition level is better than that at the production of permission, obligation and prohibition; their performance of permission at both the recognition and production levels is better than that of obligation and permission; they tend to use some specific linguistic forms which are characteristic of the types of directives. The study concludes that the subjects’ performance at the recognition and production levels do not reveal a moderate mastering of permission, obligation and prohibition. In spite of that, their recognition level is better than their production and they have weaknesses at the pragmatic level of the selected directives.

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