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The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 Is an Emoji (oxforddictionaries.com)
AmiMoJo writes: For the first time ever, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year is a pictograph (that Slashdot is unable to reproduce), officially called the 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji (U+1F602). Oxford University Press have partnered with SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world. Emoji is a Japanese word (pronounced "eh-mo-jee"), originating from Japanese mobile service providers who all had their own unique set before they were standardized in Unicode. Other notable words this year include "ad blocker," "Brexit" (British exit from the EU), lumbersexual and "they (singular)" (pronoun to refer to a person of unspecified sex).
Before the inevitable 60 posts bemoaning the fall of civilization, it's probably worth noting that logographic scripts are very common in the world, and have been used throughout history. What could be more revolutionary, and interesting, in the 21st century to see logographic elements making inroads into languages with alphabetic scripts? Kudos to Oxford!
It's probably worth noting that at one point the Ford Motor company only made one car (The Model T), and while the concept of automobiles and transportation has endured throughout history, the concept of one way to do it has long died, along with the kitsch of a crank-start car (a.k.a. using pictures to communicate)
If Ford were to start selling one kind of car again regardless of where roads may take us today, that's hardly room for praise. At some point a person with half a brain is going to ask the all-important what-the-fuck-were-you-thinking question that clearly wasn't asked at Oxford when adopting a picture as a word.
The "inroads" that brought logographic scripts into existence were born from ignorance, and there's a reason they have died off throughout history. We have words for that shit now.