Language dynamics and legitimacy 83
investors may possess the knowledge and competence needed to understand the
technicalities of an economic-oriented language, and this may jeopardise the
comprehensibility of the entrepreneurial venture, which may in turn struggle to
be cognitively legitimated. As such, we put forward the following hypothesis:
Hypothesis 1: The use of an economic-oriented value vocabulary in entrepreneurial
ventures’ descriptions triggers more requests in terms of cognitive legitimacy.
Sociopolitical legitimacy may refer to both the regulatory and the norma-
tive aspect of legitimacy (Aldrich & Fiol, 1994). Research has proposed how,
to increase legitimacy, entrepreneurial ventures may leverage a sustainability
orientation (soc ...