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Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 17. Number 1, March 2026 Pp.49-65
College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq
College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq
Registration and Students’ Affairs Department, University of Baghdad, Baghdad, Iraq
Social media has become an essential educational tool nowadays. Most existing research on digital learning in EFL contexts has primarily focused on traditional classroom-based instruction and less attention has been paid to social media platforms. The present study aims to fill the gap by using social semiotics to analyze four Instagram posts: two from BBC Learning English (@bbclearningenglish) and the other two from Learn English with Emma (@englishwithemma). Instagram posts are classified as multimodal texts with participatory and representational elements. The study adopts Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2005) Social Semiotic Multimodal Framework to analyze four purposely selected posters by answering the following research questions: What representational meanings are created by Instagram posts meant to assist EFL learners? What is the relationship between interactive meanings and Instagram posts and their EFL audiences? How might compositional meanings enhance Instagram’s overall efficacy as a multimodal teaching tool for English as a foreign language? The findings reveal that meaning can be produced using a range of semiotic resources such as linguistic content, visual aspects, and interactive components. They also show that the order of text, visuals, and user engagement all affect how meaning is created. Finally, Instagram posts use metafunctions to increase the student’s engagement, and also to improve language comprehension by using Instagram outside the traditional classroom
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Nawal Fadhil Abbas is a professor at the Department of English, College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad with a PhD in English Language and Linguistics. Her research interests include, but not limited to, Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, Stylistics, Corpus Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2608-6909
Mariam Mohammed Jasim is an MA candidate studying English Language and Linguistics at the Department of English, College of Education for Women, University of Baghdad. Her major is Linguistics. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9022-9889
Kawther Abdulameer Hussein got her MA degree in English Language, linguistics from the University of Baghdad, College of Education for Women, Department of English in 2018. Hussein’s fields of interest include Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis.
ORCID https://orcid.org/0009-0003-1263-2945