The language of social entrepreneurs

Abstract

This paper questions the application of the entrepreneurship discourse to social entrepreneurship in the UK and looks at how people ‘doing’ social enterprise appropriate or re-write the discourse to articulate their own realities. Drawing on phenomenological enquiry and discourse analysis, the study analyses the micro discourses of social entrepreneurs, as opposed to the meta rhetorics of (social) entrepreneurship. Analysis using both corpus linguistics software and Critical Discourse Analysis showed a preoccupation among interviewees with local issues, collective action, geographical community and local power struggles. Echoes of the enterprise discourse are evident but couched in linguistic devices that suggest a modified social construction of entrepreneurship, in which interviewees draw their legitimacy from a local or social morality. These findings are at odds ideologically with the discursive shifts of UK social enterprise policy over the last decade, in which a managerially defined rhetoric of enterprise is used to promote efficiency, business discipline and financial independence. The paper raises critical awareness of the tension in meanings appropriated to the enterprise discourse by social enterprise policy and practice and illustrates the value of discourse analysis for entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship research.

Keywords:

• social entrepreneurship
• social enterprise
• discourse analysis
• policy
• community.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank BNG and J. & A. Baker for their financial support of this project. They would also like to thank all the social entrepreneurs who have given their time and shared their thoughts with us, the social enterprises who provided venues for interviews and the partners and agencies who provided advice and contacts. Opinions and interpretations (and the potential errors) expressed in this paper are, of course, those of the authors alone and do not necessarily coincide with those of the sponsors.

Notes

Notes

1. The plus sign (+) before the LL (log-likelihood) figure shows relative overuse, the minus sign (−) shows relative underuse. Above or below 6.63 is considered significantly different from the norm. For the purposes of the report, insignificant words such as ‘yeah’, ‘er’, ‘y’know’ have been removed (this would be significant for other forms of linguistic or discourse analysis such as conversation analysis).

2. From a brief review of the DTI's Social Enterprise: A Strategy for Success (2002), School for Social Entrepreneurs and Community Action Network websites and the North West Development Agency Social Enterprise Survey (2003).