Specialist Vocabulary
243allows the user to read Usenet newsgroups, downloads news articles from
the newsgroups selected by the user, and allows the user to post
messages’) or a software-hardware interface (e.g. screen reader – ‘an
application that tries to read what is on a computer monitor using sound or
some other device’).^36
Johnson’s (1994: 100) observations are corroborated by Lam (2001:
34),^37 who emphasizes the pervasiveness of “especially anthropomorphic
and animative metaphors,^38 which arise from a tendency to treat
hardware and software as human or animate”, as well as “common
biological metaphors” and polysemes resulting from “figurative
extensions”. She offers such examples as the protocol handler got
confused, the computer could not understand the algorithm, the
computer/program died, as well as computer-related applications of
doctor, bug and tree (ibid.). Nevertheless, note that certain criticism might
be directed at the interpretation of the term tree used in computer
vocabulary (‘a data structure system where each item of data is linked to
several others by branches, as opposed to a line system’)^39 as an animative
metaphor, because its emergence is motivated by the similarity of
appearance, whereas animate characteristics are actually irrelevant to the
conceptualization of its figurative sense – exactly as in the case of the
widely-known mouse (or computer mouse), i.e. ‘a hand-held input device’.
That said, a better case in point of the COMPUTER (HARDWARE/
SOFTWARE) IS AN ANIMATE BEING metaphor are the above-explained
examples of virus, infect, infection, as well as suffer, immune, immunity,
etc. (as in infected file, system suffering from/immune to virus infection,
kill a virus, memory card prone to infection, etc.) or doctor (as in disc
doctor, PC doctor, spyware doctor, etc.),^40 where the frame or scenario of
BEING HEALTHY/ILL makes sense only as long as a COMPUTER is
conceptualized as an ANIMATE BEING.
Having outlined the major recurring types of conceptualization
relevant to English computer vocabulary, especially those contributory to
naming computer hardware and software, it is worth noting that Koch
(2008: 107–108) emphasizes that certain paths of semantic change “are of
particular interest, especially those which are followed again and again
[...], and which therefore seem to point to constant cognitive factors”. As
for such cognitive factors at play here, it must be recognized that “the
(^36) See the CTDG.
(^37) In turn, she gives credit to the research by James et al. (1994: 41–42).
(^38) Emphasis mine.
(^39) See the DPCI.
(^40) See the DPCI.