Measuring University of Anbar EFL Students’ Awareness of Emoji Faces in Whatsapp and Their Implementations

Abstract

Technology has changed our way of communication, especially the written communication via social media. In fact, people tend to use abbreviation in writing messages such as (plz) for please, (ex) for example, (OMG) oh my God, and so on. Recently, vin the digital world, people start using Emoji in social media sites such as: Facebook, Viber, Twitter, Whatsapp, and Instagram programmes which become part of everyday messages communication. To this end, the aim of the present study is to investigate EFL University of Anbar Students’ awareness of the meaning and representation of Emoji faces, and also to what extent they do they use Emoji faces in written communication via Whatsapp program. To collect the data for the study, a test and attitudinal questionnaire were used. The results of the study reveal that the students use Emoji faces in in written communication in a very limited way and the majority of them do not have awareness of most of Emoji faces’ meanings and representation. Sometimes, unknown meaning of Emoji faces lead to misunderstanding between the sender and the receiver if one uses them in a random way.