Understanding the language of entrepreneurship

Philip Roundy and Arben Asllani

Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences, 2019, vol. 35, issue 2, 113-127

Abstract: Purpose - Entrepreneurship is an activity with far-reaching economic and cultural implications. Research seeking to understand the cognition and behavior of entrepreneurs is devoting increasing attention to how entrepreneurs construct and utilize discourse. However, word-level analysis of the specific language used by entrepreneurs has not received significant attention. The purpose of this paper is to identify the words that comprise entrepreneurship discourse and describe how word-usage has changed over time. Design/methodology/approach - To examine the language of entrepreneurship, the authors use modified MapReduce algorithms in conjunction with text mining techniques to construct a longitudinal corpus of approximately 2.5m words. The authors identify the most frequently used words in the entrepreneurship lexicon and then use content analysis to chart the evolution of word-use. Findings - The findings reveal that entrepreneurs’ lexicon is complex and fluid. The most commonly used words suggest new trends in entrepreneurship. Originality/value - The findings and methodological procedures contribute to research on entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process and, specifically, to work on entrepreneurial discourse, language-use and new venture communication. The findings also have implications for entrepreneurs and policymakers.

Keywords: Language; Discourse analysis; Text mining; Text analysis; Entrepreneurial communication; Small business and entrepreneurship (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jeaspp:jeas-08-2017-0084

DOI: 10.1108/JEAS-08-2017-0084

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences is currently edited by Associate Professor Ghulam A Arain and Dr Rebecca Abraham

More articles in Journal of Economic and Administrative Sciences from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().