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hardly unusual, since – as stressed by Ullmann (1962: 214)^60 –
anthropomorphic metaphors are among the most frequently met types of
metaphors in a majority of languages, as well as registers, styles, etc.
Neither is this onomasiological directionality surprising in the light of
the knowledge of the extralinguistic context, since language users “share a
great deal of prelinguistic and extralinguistic experience which is likely to
shape language” (Sweetser 1990: 7), and performing or seeing someone
perform a job, profession or occupation is definitely a ubiquitous – even if
only vicarious – part of such experience. This extralinguistic experience
bears all the hallmarks of “experiential reality”, that is “our ordinary
experience of the world around us, [...] some common and basic realities
which humans in all societies experience on a day-to-day basis” (Newman
2004: 195).^61 It is this fact that makes PROFESSIONS/OCCUPATIONS a potent
onomasiological source yielding figurative conceptualizations applicable
to COMPUTER HARDWARE/SOFTWARE.
Furthermore, this onomasiological strategy is even more justifiable, as,
on closer scrutiny, it may be claimed that all the hardware and software
items in question are construed as HUMAN BEINGS who are EMPLOYED to
PERFORM a certain specific ACTIVITY, TASK, FUNCTION or a JOB.
Considering these conceptual domains as the crucial elements of the same
conceptual frame or scenario, it is evident why it is so feasible – even in
the specialist language of computer technology – for English words which
originally referred to PROFESSIONS/OCCUPATIONS to be used metaphorically as
the names of not only tangible and palpable hardware (processor, printer,
server, etc.), but also intangible and elusive computer software (data
logger, reader, image editor, etc.). Certainly, the latter case of the above-
discussed directionality in metaphorical sense development corroborates
the postulates of the general CONCRETE Æ ABSTRACT tendency in
figurative lexical semantic change formulated by Lakoff and Johnson
(1980).
At this point, the question might be asked whether the COMPUTER
HARDWARE/SOFTWARE IS A WORKER metaphorical onomasiological path
will continue to exist in English in the future. In the light of the language-
external considerations highlighted above, it may be safely presumed that
it will, although its future productivity is dependent on one critical factor.
The obvious limitation here is the sine qua non condition that the (present
or future) profession/occupation which may qualify as a prospective
source of figurative conceptualizations, as well as the function of the
(^60) Also, see Lakoff and Johnson (1980: 33–34), as well as Semino (2008: 101).
(^61) Newman’s (2004: 195) otherwise reasonable reservations on the ambiguously
unscientific character of “ordinary experience” are irrelevant to the argument here.