Legitimating language and emotional tone in antenarratives: A cultural entrepreneurship perspective

Abstract

The concept of storytelling has gained prominence within entrepreneurship, especially as the key property underpinning the process of cultural entrepreneurship. Although it is conventionally assumed that entrepreneurial communications take the form of fully formed stories (e.g., business pitches), by relaxing this assumption, we are able to advance cultural entrepreneurship and test its boundaries. We theorize that when new ventures choose specific legitimating language to share very short story fragments (i.e., antenarratives) online, the audience is compelled to engage. Furthermore, we suggest that the effect of legitimating language on stakeholder engagement will vary based on the emotional tone conveyed in these antenarratives. To test our theory, we construct dictionaries to measure three types of legitimating language (pragmatic, moral, cognitive) and empirically analyze a large, unique dataset of new ventures from X. Results offer support for our theorizing.