Cognitive Metaphor in English Digital Discourse: Embodied Schemas in the Conceptualization of Online Activity

Abstract

This article examines conventional metaphors that organize the vocabulary of English digital discourse and explains how embodied experience provides cognitive structure for abstract online activity. The analysis focuses on recurrent expressions such as platform, window, page, navigate, stream, traffic, feed, viral, footprint, cloud and thread. Drawing on Conceptual Metaphor Theory and image-schema approaches, the study treats these units not as isolated stylistic ornaments but as evidence of systematic mappings from spatial, material, biological and motion-related experience to digital concepts. A qualitative semantic analysis shows that container, path, surface, flow, nourishment, contagion and trace schemas make technologically complex processes easier to conceptualize and communicate. The study also distinguishes between metaphorical motivation and lexical conventionalization: many digital metaphors remain cognitively transparent even after becoming routine technical vocabulary. The proposed classification clarifies how embodied schemas contribute to terminological productivity, user-interface language and the everyday interpretation of digital environments.