Machines Are People

Source Domain
person

Target Domain
machine

Degree Of Functioning Is Health - The blender just died - His engine came to life - This battery has a life of 3 years - Her typewriter is sick - The typewriter went crazy

Note: which have certain metaphorical features: self-replicating, destructive,and attached to normal (executable) programs.

Cessation Of Function Is Killing - Kill the lights, music, etc.

Calculation Is Thinking - My computer is thinking about the problem - The thermostat figures out how to adjust the temperature

- 1 "ROM looks for purged menus."

- 2 "Memory manager can throw them away if it needs the space"

- 3 "Resource manager tries to load. . ."

- 4 "...where the application would like the new object to go..."

- 5 "the memory manager does not relocate objects just for the hell of it"

- 7 "the compiler knows..."

- 8 "the memory manager understands"

- 9 "the memory manager is actually pretty smart."

- 10 My PC's personality is defined by its ROM

- 11 The Mac is user-friendly

Note: depending on the expertise of the speaker in the domian of computers.Thus an expert speaker might personify the compiler, while a less expertspeaker might personify the program, and a novice might personify thewhole computer.

Student paper--examples from computer manual, Alan Schwartz

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