| Contemporary cognitive linguists believe that metaphor is not just a rhetorical device, but more importantly it is a universal way of thinking as well as a cognitive instrument. Metaphor is pervasive everywhere in our thinking and language. It is by nature an organizing tool for thinking and a special perspective that people observe and recognize this world. From this point of view, metaphor plays an immeasurable role in science. Scientific language is full of metaphor as literary language.Computer science language is probably the richest one in all scientific languages. Numerous experts and scholars have made researches on computer and internet metaphor from different aspects and many innovative achievements have been made. But due to the multiple branching and complex structures in computer, it's difficult to make the study on computer language metaphor comprehensively and systematically. The present study focuses on one of the main branches of computer---the software, which is considered as the soul of computer. Metaphor of the software language involved in few scholars, especially domestic research in this area is sketchy. But the application of metaphor in software has become increasingly indispensable for software developers and users. Today, the rapid development of computer hardware has been raising higher demands and challenges on software industry. Metaphors are being used more and more frequently in the development of software designs; at the same time, users'understanding of software metaphor also greatly influences their computer use. Due to the important role of metaphor in the field of software, this paper, based on Lakoff's theory of cognitive metaphor, will conduct an in-depth study of the phenomenon of software metaphor and try to explore the basic structure, type and characteristics of metaphor in software language, intending to raise people's awareness of the universality and importance of software metaphor.The study shows that:metaphor are widespread in computer software language and are primarily reflected through several common models, namely, software is a fiction, software is a building, software is a living being and software is a tool. Different metaphors reflect different interpretations for software development process, and conversely further guide software development. A further classification analysis on software metaphor shows that different types of software metaphor function in different environments:Structural metaphor tend to represent the process operation in abstract concepts as well as in software user-interface; orientational metaphor tend to identify quantification and sequence in software usage, and are mostly embodied in user interface; due to their more basic nature, ontological metaphor are to be found prevailing everywhere in software. Finally, the case study of metaphor in Internet Explorer browser further confirms the argument in this thesis.All the above shows that, the study on software metaphor is of profound significance in both software development and usage. For software developers, software metaphor further their understanding of the software development process, playing a huge role in the inspiration of the writing of a more rational software code and the designing of more practical software programs; from the user's perspective, it appears that the master of software metaphor provides a short cut for them to get familiar with the operating environment and methods in computer software.
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