Entrepreneurial Finance, Crowdfunding, and Language

70 Language and legitimacy dynamics

In their recent work, Taeuscher et al. (2021) explored the issue of distinct-

iveness as a source of legitimacy in crowdfunding campaigns. Specifically,

they theorised that not all audiences confer legitimacy on a cognitive basis (i.e.

whether the venture fits within taken-for-granted accepted categories) and that

potential investors (in this case, backers of campaigns) crave novelty, rather

than conformity, when evaluating prospective projects and thus represent

‘novelty-expecting audiences’ (2021:150). Consequently, they claimed that

such campaigns do not need to reach levels of ‘optimal distinctiveness’ to gain

legitimacy and support as their peculiarities benefit them by matching the

expectations of aud ...