Abstract

Climate communication depends not only on the information presented but also on the linguistic frames through which readers interpret it. The article offers a critical philological approach to metaphor in English-language climate discourse, distinguishing conceptual mappings, local lexical choices, implied actors and the evaluations they introduce. It synthesizes cognitive metaphor theory, critical metaphor analysis and experimental findings on metaphorical framing. A structured procedure is proposed for contrasting war, race, journey and health frames without treating any of them as ideologically neutral or universally effective. Invented examples illustrate possible interpretations; they are not represented as sampled media texts. The analysis identifies a central trade-off between urgency and shared agency and argues that contextual interpretation must precede normative recommendations. The outcome is a transparent framework for linguistic comparison and for critically informed communication.