Papers from Oxford taken in by, for example, sharp mixture of smiley faces (10)
I believe the answer is:
ideographs
'smiley faces' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to communication as well as being plural nouns.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'papers from oxford taken in by for example sharp mixture' is the wordplay.
'papers' becomes 'ID' (identification papers).
'from oxford' becomes 'o' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'taken in by' is an insertion indicator.
'for example' becomes 'eg' (short for 'exempli gratia', 'for example' in Latin).
'mixture' indicates an anagram.
'sharp' is an anagram of 'raphs'.
'eg'+'raphs'='egraphs'
'o' put within 'egraphs' is 'eographs'.
'id'+'eographs'='IDEOGRAPHS'
'of' is the link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Another definition for ideographs that I've seen is " representational images".)