Cognitive Approaches to Specialist Languages

Specialist Vocabulary

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In consequence, it is hardly surprising that “[m]etaphors are ubiquitous
in the user interfaces of today’s computers” (Smilowitz 1996),^24 whereas
“[s]oftware designers are incorporating metaphors into a variety of
software, from operating systems to information retrieval systems” (ibid.).
The incidence of figurative terms and expression in computer parlance is
so high that Johnson^25 (1991) feels justified to go as far as to claim that:

“Although every scientific discipline uses metaphor, there is probably no

field that uses metaphor quite as pervasively and idiosyncratically as does

computer science” (Johnson 1991: 273).

Despite the relevance of the foregoing quotation, it is hardly arguable
that one of the most important characteristics of figurative sense formation
in the language of computer science should be its idiosyncratic, one-off
character. On the contrary, certain paths of lexical semantic change may
be discerned – unless what Johnson (1991: 273) refers to is the very
existence of such onomasiological paths. As pointed out by Blank (2003:
39), onomasiological studies aim to unveil “different lexical ‘pathways’
through which a particular concept has been designated by going back to
the respective source concepts”, and so, consequently, they “help to
discover recurrent schemas^26 of designating a concept or a group of
concepts”^27 (ibid.).^
As regards the computer technology vocabulary in English, such
recurrent paths of conceptualizations include mostly metaphors, in
particular anthropomorphic metaphors, which – according to Johnson
(1994, 100) – are “the most common kind of metaphor in formal computer
discourse”. Anthropomorphic metaphors involve semantic extension of the
vocabulary in the category HUMAN BODY or HUMAN BODY PARTS
(Cymbalista and Kleparski 2013: 81). Here, they produce the COMPUTER IS
HUMAN BODY (OR BODY PART) general conceptual metaphor. This general
metaphor may be further subdivided into two major varieties: COMPUTER
HARDWARE IS HUMAN BODY (OR BODY PART) and COMPUTER SOFTWARE IS
HUMAN BODY (OR BODY PART), where the latter seems to be a metaphor
within a metaphor, conforming to the CONCRETE Æ ABSTRACT
directionality of figurative sense development proposed by Lakoff and

(^24) Quoted after James (2001: 119), as the on-line article by Smilowitz (1996) is no
longer available.
(^25) Gerald (not Mark, Lakoff’s collaborator).
(^26) Emphasis mine.
(^27) An example offered by Blank (2003: 39) is “the metaphorical expression of
MENTAL PERCEPTION through words for PHYSICAL MANIPULATION”.