Are masonry bridges human beings?

Abstract

In spite of the common belief that the language used by engineers and architects to create, describe and spread their works, exclusively consists of technical terms from the realms of engineering and architecture disregarding other disciplines, in this article counterexamples will be shown which prove that at least in the field of masonry bridges the opposite occurs. Metaphor from the medical and psychological field seems to be the major tool used by these professionals to create and explain their knowledge. Thus, whenever the engineer or architect identify themselves with their work and see it as an extension of their own selves they use metaphorical terminology to express, that to them, masonry bridges are human beings. Therefore, they assign and expect human qualities along the whole life cycle of these bridges and, at the same time, play the role of creator, parent, defender, doctor or psychologist according to the situations or problems their bridge-child may be involved in. Moreover, it will become evident that the abundant use of this metaphor and its terminological correspondences are, by no means, a strange phenomenon but the logical result of the natural interdisciplinarity between building techniques, medicine (including psychology), terminology and language.