[dTal]

Your objection on the grounds of lack of standardization applies to language as a whole. Dictionaries describe, not prescribe. It is our job to evolve a mutual understanding of what symbols mean and sort out any misunderstandings; it is Unicode's job to provide us with those symbols, whatever symbols we want. And to evolve that mutual understanding, we have to use the symbols. You might ask why bother, why not stick with the language we have? Well, you hear the same objection every time language evolves, and the answer is always the same - some people find the new way expressive and useful, is all.

By the way, we don't struggle with deciphering hieroglyphics - it's a phonetic alphabet, not a pictorial language.

[eldaisfish]

Your characterisation of what a dictionary does is misleading. Dictionaries in languages like English are a combination of prescriptive and descriptive. Change happens because humans are complex and evolving and language must evolve alongside. There remains a core of the language that is prescriptive.

That does not mean that people are free to redefine words as they choose and change their meanings entirely. That is how you get a dialect and then a different language.

With emoji, there is no shared understanding precisely because there are simply too many, often with no meaning and when meaning does exist, it is either vague or dependent on culture. This is absolutely not the case with written language.

[Timpy]

>That does not mean that people are free to redefine words as they choose and change their meanings entirely. That is how you get a dialect and then a different language.

There's nothing wrong with new dialects and new languages.

>With emoji, there is no shared understanding precisely because there are simply too many

A lot of people are already using emojis where everybody in the stream of communication shares understanding. Using an obscure emoji is possible just like using an obscure word is possible.

>often with no meaning and when meaning does exist, it is either vague or dependent on culture.

Using text for communication has the exact same feature. Words can be vague or can dependent on culture. Words can have two meanings. Words can be sarcastic or patronizing just like a thumbs up or smiling emoji can be.

By your reasoning, we should ask British people to stop using X's and O's at the end of their texts to indicate the tone of the message. And Japanese people should stop using ASCII emojis that border on artwork to indicate emotion.