A Cognitive Analysis Of Conceptual Metaphors In Computerspeak

Metaphor has long been considered as a figure of speech in language, which is challenged by the cognitive linguists in recent twenty-seven years. The American linguists Lakoff and Johnson claim that conceptual metaphors exist not only in human language, but also in human thought and actions; they are not a superficial phenomenon, but a cognitive mechanism of a higher level. The essence of metaphor lies in understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another. It projects the image-schematic structure of the source domain onto the target domain. Accordingly, metaphor is the locus for abstract reasoning. This new cognitive approach to language brings a fresh perspective for us to study metaphors. The conceptual blending theory is an amelioration and elaboration of the conceptual metaphor theory that leaves the insights of the conceptual metaphor intact, and makes it possible to handle more intricate cases.The development of the computer has been astonishingly great in such a technically fast advancing society, which has influenced our lives greatly and formed a series of computer culture. Concomitant with the development of the computer is a large amount of computer metaphorical language. Some scholars have begun to do relevant researches on computer metaphor from various aspects, but generally speaking, they are mostly concerned with computer visual metaphors and discuss how to apply them to software development and website construction without involving metaphorical language about computer. Although some studies are concerned with metaphorical language, the research is within the framework of traditional metaphor theory and is only treated them as a figure of speech. Following a cognitive approach, this thesis tries to analyze and study conceptual metaphors underlying everyday computer terms to make people aware of the ubiquity and vital importance of metaphors in the computerspeak. On the basis of analysis and discussion of the data collected, it has been found out that computer metaphors have their experiential basis in human bodily experience, and in turn structure our thinking about computer and our daily interaction. In data analysis, we have adopted two metaphor theories, namely the conceptual metaphor theory put forward by Lakoff and Johnson and the conceptual blending theory established by Fauconnier and Turner. It is found that the conceptual metaphor theory and the conceptual blending theory are largely complementary and can address conceptual metaphors with different specificities: the conceptual metaphor theory is of great help in specific induction of conceptual metaphors in general, whereas the conceptual blending theory demonstrates its power in individual metaphor analysis in specific context. Therefore, these two theories can be combined for better application in the analysis of computer metaphors.