[ekphrasis]

Yes, but as the author of the article argues, the emoji icon of an eggplant has been culturally interpreted with a different semiotic meaning. The same could very well happen with the emoji icon of a watergun (despite the emoji’s semiotic shift), indicating a symbolic duplexity in the meaning of a handgun.

I.e., if you choose to mean a handgun when writing a watergun, the emoji’s meaning can change.

[mc32]

This very much reminds me of the CCP banning words online and then people coming up with new “synonyms” to bypass the ban, then that gets banned and new phrases words take its place and it goes on...