The aim of the paper is to explore metaphorical expressions used in informal Polish in the area of computers and the Internet. The study is based on a corpus, compiled and analyzed by the present author; the corpus consists of short informal texts (entries) taken from Polish Internet message boards devoted to computers and the Internet. Altogether, the corpus comprises around 1,500,000 words. The metaphors found in the corpus will be discussed within the cognitive framework. Special attention will be devoted to one of the most frequent conceptual metaphors found in the corpus, namely COMPUTERS ARE HUMANS, or, to be more precise, BADLY WORKING COMPUTER IS A SICK PERSON. Some place will also be devoted to the infl uence of English on metaphorical expressions (in the domain of computers and the Internet) in Polish.

The aim of the present paper is to discuss metaphorical constructions, based on figurative uses of words, in informal Polish in the field of computers and the Internet. The study is based on the author’s own corpus, compiled on the basis of short informal texts (entries, posts) written on 32 selected Internet forums. Altogether, the corpus consists of 1,541,449 words. The paper, as the title suggests, focuses on one metaphorical formula, i.e. COMPUTERS ARE BUILDINGS. The metaphors which can be subsumed under this heading belong to the most frequent in the corpus (alongside a different type, i.e. COMPUTERS ARE HUMANS). They are discussed within the cognitive framework, as introduced by Lakoff and Johnson (1980). Some attention will also be devoted to the possible infl uence of English upon Polish metaphorical constructions used in the area of computers and the Internet.

The article discusses the persuasive use of metaphors in the online discourse of influencers of the bodypositive movement, which aims to change the way society thinks about the body. Three cases will be considered: (a) first, the similarities in the conceptual metaphors used by the representatives of the two languages, (b) the metaphors used only in Spanish, (c) finally, the metaphors used only in the discourse in Polish. These three situations have been analysed and documented using examples Spanish and Polish examples, taken from publications posted on the Instagram platform.