Abstract
This paper aims to determine the efficacy of persuasive strategies in the SME pitch by examining the discursive interaction that takes place in a televised corpus, taken from the Spanish TV programme “Tu Oportunidad” (“Your Chance”), the counterpart of the British Dragon’s Den and the American Shark Tank. Using the information gathered in the discursive analysis of the corpus, we address how the use of rational and emotional factors may influence the decisions taken by the investors and how the entrepreneurs may achieve credibility. The results show the importance of rational argumentation in entrepreneurial and SME pitches, relegating emotional aspects to a secondary role from the persuasive point of view, which should, however, not be disregarded. Entrepreneurs should anchor their discourse firmly in a rational cognitive framework, but without discarding those emotional appeals which may be naturally connected to rational arguments, reinforcing their validity.
Highlights
In his seminal study on speech acts Austin (1962) describes the ‘perlocutionary force’ of some utterances, which comprises those linguistic and paralinguistic techniques that enable the speaker to elicit a certain response from the listener
The size of the research corpus is limited (10 pitches), a detailed analysis of the SME entrepreneurs’ discourse and of their communicative exchanges with the investors allows us to draw some provisional conclusions about the persuasive strategies that are most effective in entrepreneurial pitches
Emotional aspects had a positive effect in support of rational arguments but had no persuasive effect on their own
Summary
In his seminal study on speech acts Austin (1962) describes the ‘perlocutionary force’ of some utterances, which comprises those linguistic and paralinguistic techniques that enable the speaker to elicit a certain response from the listener. Modern studies on persuasion draw on Austin’s findings to identify the strategies that can be more effective to convince the listeners, including the use of rational arguments and emotional appeals. Our intention is to determine to what extent, and under what circumstances, emotional appeals may be effective to convince the conversational partner in SME entrepreneurship discourse. As Clarke, Cornelissen, and Healey (2019), van Werven, Bouwmeester, and Cornelissen (2019), Roundy and Asllani (2018), Daly and Davy (2016), and Clark (2008), among others, have shown, the entrepreneurial pitch has well-marked structural features, specific themes and figures of speech, and it is manifestly persuasive in intention (cf Chen, Yao, & Kotha, 2009; Dıez-Prados, 2019; Garcıa-Gomez, 2018) For the purposes of this study the entrepreneurial pitch may be defined as an oral presentation which provides ‘a brief description of the value proposition of an idea’ to ‘potential business angels or venture capitalists’ (Wheatcroft, 2016, p. 26). As Clarke, Cornelissen, and Healey (2019), van Werven, Bouwmeester, and Cornelissen (2019), Roundy and Asllani (2018), Daly and Davy (2016), and Clark (2008), among others, have shown, the entrepreneurial pitch has well-marked structural features, specific themes and figures of speech, and it is manifestly persuasive in intention (cf. Chen, Yao, & Kotha, 2009; Dıez-Prados, 2019; Garcıa-Gomez, 2018)
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