The word "software" was first used in print in January 1958 in American Mathematical Monthly by John W Tukey as a sort-of opposite to "hardware" (the machine parts) for the situation when "stored program" did not cover all the things held in memory being described.
In 1958, a program was stored on cards, and then read into memory and stored to be run (where it became `soft'ware). Today everything is in memory (a drive is a type of memory, but a slow one).
It was used *because* it is not equivalent to programs.
In 1958 you had this distinction, today you don't have the same distiniction.
If you define software and programs as equivalent, then you lose detail and must start claiming that data can never be software!
Data is any type of information that can be expressed in binary. So, data is software. I fail to see how you could draw the opposite conclusion.
You can use their expression, aslong as you don't change it. You can also quote pieces (fair use).
The situation given was I need to adapt the idea to the audience, [...]
So use the idea, ideas aren't copyrighted. I'm quite sure you can come up with a expression that presents the idea in a good way.