I don't understand. Emacs blows vim away here. Of course, obviously both emacs and vim users are unaware of these symbolic modes. But Emacs modes are designed to have this idea of customizing the word, sentence, paragraph, and symbolic expression per language/syntax. And using the mark and region and operating on them with commands is exactly what's described in this vim article. That said, I didn't know that vim could do these things, either, because the default vim objects are lines, which are hideously crude and turned me off.

Do not use viper mode. Use evil, a much better emulation layer from the authors of vim-mode and vimpulse. I also recommend evil-surround.