Entrepreneurial Finance, Crowdfunding, and Language

Language in entrepreneurship 25

as past and future orientation (Di Pietro et al., 2020), abstraction and con-

creteness (Chen et al., 2018; McDonald & Gao, 2019), also have an eect. For

instance, the use of abstract language when describing a product allows audiences

to imagine the outcomes, whereas when discussing a potential business oppor-

tunity, the use of abstract language leads to the perception that venture creation

is less likely to occur (Chen et al., 2018; McDonald & Gao, 2019).

As existing studies illustrate, language constitutes a key tool not only to

obtain stakeholders’ attention but also to punctually choose what information

to deliver to stakeholders to persuade them of the appropriateness of their entre-

preneurial ideas a