Metaphor, topoi, and cognitive heuristics in climate governance: a dual-staged metaphorical argumentation analysis of climate political speech

Abstract Although metaphors are widely recognised as central to climate communication, scant studies have explored how they function as structured arguments that exploit cognitive heuristics in political discourse. This study proposes a dual-staged model of metaphorical argumentation that links Toulmin’s layout, discourse-historical topoi and cognitive accounts of heuristics, applied to a corpus-assisted analysis of US officials’ speeches at the 2021 Leaders Summit on Climate. Using Wmatrix-assisted metaphor identification, the study identifies journey , construction and illness as predominant metaphors, with relevant expressions reconstructed as chained argumentative stages. The analysis shows journey argumentation normalises cooperative, time-bound climate action, construction framing legitimises incremental, techno-economic solutions and illness metaphors provide danger and moral urgency. Across patterns, these metaphorical argumentative cells combine into a macro-argumentative chain that organises and narrows the space of acceptable climate responses. The study illuminates how metaphor-based argumentation steers public reasoning in climate governance, offering valuable insights into the cognitive–discursive mechanisms of metaphorical argumentation.