Warning Used by the EFL Students for Getting the Attention of the Addressee The Instructor

Abstract

Language is a means of communication through which human beings can achieve certain goals by sending and receiving messages. Chomsky (1986: 15) defines language as “a set of very specific universal principles which are intrinsic properties of the human mind and part of our species’ genetic endowment”. Many of the communicative acts people attempt to produce and comprehend are speech acts such as requesting, apologizing, warning, thanking, greeting, advising and criticizing.Levinson (1983: 5) defines pragmatics as “the study of language usage”. Kasper and Rose (2002: 2) define it as “the study of communicative action in its sociocultural context”. Pragmatic studies are concerned with speech acts within a social context. The ability to comprehend and produce these acts is referred to as pragmatic competence which is concerned with both cultural and linguistic knowledge and the social distance of the interlocutors. In performing any action such as warning, promising, threatening or complaining, some universal aspects are drawn from the social context in which each action is performed.