Discursive framing struggles play a fundamental role in shaping the uptake dynamics of renewable energy, including solar photovoltaic (PV). This study aimed to identify the salient arguments and themes that have shaped discourses on solar PV in Switzerland over five decades in the media (1971–2022) and in parliamentary documents (1981–2022). To do so, arguments and themes pertaining to solar PV were identified in both media articles (N = 1161) and parliamentary documents (N = 373). Then, using cluster analysis, the themes that followed similar temporal patterns across decades were grouped together and the main arguments were extracted. The results demonstrated that solar PV has benefited from positive and increasing coverage over time, with both the media and parliament reacting to noteworthy events (e.g., the Fukushima nuclear accident). Additionally, the results demonstrated the solidification over time in both the media and parliamentary documents of techno-economic, technocratic, and techno-managerial approaches to solar PV. Some of the core features of this framing can be traced by back to meta-discourses such as interventionism, ecological modernization, nuclear power, and fossil fuel abundance. Actors in the media (mostly elites and experts), who primarily focused on the role of the federal state and the technical potential of PV, and actors in parliament, who argued mostly to encourage renewable energies and design support measures, sustain these dominant and meta-discourses. The successful governance and acceleration of a sustainable energy transition in Switzerland and elsewhere will require, first and foremost, a deconstruction of the influence of landscape-level meta-discourses in current dominant energy debates and transitions.