In many cases people do not mention the obvious. If there is a stall alarm blaring, I do not think any pilot would actually say "the stall alarm is on". So I d

In many cases people do not mention the obvious. If there is a stall alarm blaring, I do not think any pilot would actually say "the stall alarm is on". So I do not think it too surprising that nobody mentioned stall in conversation. Now about why they did not put the nose down, it seems either that (i) they were both under the impression that the electronic controls would not let them stall; or (ii) from their experience with smaller planes they thought they would be more pronounced shaking and other physical clues when the plane did stall. Also it seems that they were much more scared of the storm than stalling so they just wanted to escape it.