Entrepreneurial Finance, Crowdfunding, and Language

Language dynamics and legitimacy 81

time). Chen finds that those languages that can be considered ‘futureless’ (which

entails no obligation of using a future reference when talking about a foreseen

event) increase the propensity to save and accumulate wealth, as well as engage

in healthy behaviours.

Other research (Green and Li, 2011) has portrayed organizations themselves

as loci where individuals can exploit language tools (such as rhetoric) as persua-

sive mechanisms to institutionalise knowledge and make sense of its ambiguity,

thus legitimising their practices and actions and ‘transform[ing] subjective

meanings into socially accepted and objective forms’ (Alvesson, 1993: 1007).

The idea that language, as a constitutive element of the soc ...