Chapter Eleven
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fundamental to the construal of the frame or scenario^45 of READING. These
domains seem to include, mainly, a HUMAN BEING who is LOOKING, with
his/her EYES, at the INFORMATION that has been WRITTEN/PRINTED on
PAPER/PARCHMENT, ETC. (i.e. a CARRIER MEDIUM),^46 for the purpose of the
COMPREHENSION OF THE MEANING of such information. Furthermore,
when done for someone else, READING ALOUD additionally implies the
information which was ORIGINALLY WRITTEN/PRINTED but which is then
RENDERED IN SPEECH for THE BENEFIT OF ANOTHER PERSON.
Once the participation of a HUMAN BEING, his/her EYES and the use of
PAPER/PARCHMENT, ETC., become peripheral^47 – whereas central^48 become
such elements as a READ HEAD (which figuratively performs the activity of
the EYES), a MAGNETIC/OPTICAL DISK, which (though different from
PAPER, ETC.) still remains a CARRIER MEDIUM that offers not as much
written/printed as RECORDED INFORMATION, which information is then
RENDERED IN ANOTHER MEDIUM (rather than RENDERED IN SPEECH) – it is
hardly surprising that reader may become a specialist term for computer
devices through metaphorical personification. More importantly, this
personification also depends on a more specific frame applicable here,
namely that of BEING EMPLOYED TO READ, involving a HUMAN BEING who
is EMPLOYED to PERFORM a certain specific ACTIVITY, TASK, FUNCTION or
a JOB (in other words: a WORKER performing a certain PROFESSION/
OCCUPATION).
Hence, due to the figurative perception of COMPUTER HARDWARE in
terms of a WORKER performing a specific PROFESSION/OCCUPATION, the
COMPUTER HARDWARE IS A WORKER metaphor underlies the following
sense of reader: ‘a computer hardware device that reads the data stored on
one medium and converts it into another form’.^49 The same
conceptualization is instrumental in the onomasiological application of
reader in such specialist terms as optical reader, i.e. ‘a device found in
scanners that captures the information on paper and translates that image
(^45) As in Fillmore (1977, 1982, etc.).
(^46) There may be many more CARRIER MEDIA here, less prototypical (in the sense of
Wierzbicka 1980) than PAPER, such as FABRIC, slates of WOOD, CLAY, STONE, etc.
(^47) As in Rosch (1973), Wierzbicka (1980) and Geeraerts (1997).
(^48) Ibid.
(^49) Note that the predecessor of this current sense of reader appeared already in the
1940s, applicable to the predecessors of today’s computers. The earliest OED-
recorded occurrence of that sense (‘a device for obtaining the data stored on tape,
cards, or other media, usually converting the data into coded electrical signals’)
dates from 1946: “When the problem is punched on the cards they are dropped into
a slot in a ‘reader’”.