Do atheists care less about swearing?

[MTL]

Emojis are really nothing more than modern hieroglyphics, when you think about it:

Not actually true... hieroglyphs actually represent sounds, not individual words or ideas. Even the modern AlphaBet comes from Aleph Beth, which meant "ox" and "house (or tent)", respectively, the names for the symbols of each letter. While I agree that, in general, the new shorthand employed by "kids these days!!!" is galling, that has always been true of the language of the younger generation when viewed by the older one (or by young ones who adopt the standards of the older group). The street-cant of the Droogies in A Clockwork Orange  is the author's take on the evolution of language between generations, based on the changes he noticed and heard complained about in England, as he explains in the afterword of the edition I read.

And I think that emojis are a good way of injecting emotions into our online exchanges online, especially ones where a comment can be misconstrued as cruel or harsh, like sarcasm. In real life, we heavily employ visual and verbal-tone signaling to add "flavor" to our encoded messages (language), and without something akin to the smileyface, we are left to guess at the two other forms of communication intended by the author.

I take no issue with the evolution of language.  In fact, while it is undeniable that literacy, in the West, at least, is slipping, and the advancement of technology very arguably plays a role in facilitating that slippage, I am actually rather unimpressed with language purists who seem to think it is unacceptable for a language to change, even slightly.

It is the steadily diminishing vocabulary and comprehension that I bemoan, not the adaptation of meanings.

For instance, I am a Francophile.  I love French.  I particularly love Canadian French...whereas many other Francophiles tend to prefer Standard French or Parisian French, and eschew the harsh French-Canadian dialect
...or Cajun or other Colonial french dialects from around the world.

I saw this video on YouTube...a married couple who perform colonial french folk music, together.

He is Missouri French, she is not.

but she was a Francophile and a major in French for many years,
and she describes how her attitude came to change with regards to being a purist about French:





I did also acknowledge that emojis do help to compensate for the non-verbal communication
that is lost in the written word;

what I dislike is the inevitable human tendency to over-rely upon them, like a crutch,
rather than at least trying, a little bit, to challenge ourselves to convey an idea with words, rather than a picture.

And I would also argue that emojis can convey a sound, too.

I mean, don't these convey sounds to you?