Can Emoji be disabled in Mountain Lion?

Hi everyone, I'm new to Mountain Lion and the emoji are driving me crazy haha! People seem to overuse them in Twitter, or maybe it just seems that way since I never saw them with Snow Leopard. I'd like to disable them so I'm not inundated with emoji descriptions. Google isn't offering me any help. I can't find a place in YoruFukurou to disable the emoji so for now I've just gotten rid of people's display names but now I'm just stuck with usernames. If there's a way to ignore emoji, I'd really really like to know how. thanks!