From Concern to Redemption: Exploring Emotional Arcs of Social Entrepreneurs’ TED Talks

The existing literature has shown that the emotion-symbolic work of entrepreneurs involves the strategic use of emotions to attract attention to a cause of interest and appeal to stakeholders. This study examines a linguistic mechanism of how this happens. By drawing on a construct of emotional arc, the trajectory of the sentiment from beginning to end in narrative, and the concept of the “world of concern” (Creed et al. in Acad Manag Rev, 2022), the embodied and shared values that shape how actors interact with institutions, it uses the texts of TED Talks of social entrepreneurs to compare their sentiment and the trajectory of how the emotions flow throughout the narratives to their traditional peers, entrepreneurs. Using multiple sentiment lexicons and computational techniques, it shows that social entrepreneurs, on average, use more negative language. While the emotional arcs of both groups are of a similar shape, the arcs of social entrepreneurs exhibit a pronounced dip in sentiment in the middle, reflecting their engagement with societal challenges, followed by a strong upward trajectory toward a hopeful resolution. This trajectory aligns with McAdams (Redemptive self: stories Americans live by. Oxford University Press, Inc., 2006) concept of redemption, where narratives progress from adversity to transformation and resolution. This chapter helps illustrate how the emotions expressed in the narratives of social entrepreneurs articulate the values that motivate them to tackle societal problems through their entrepreneurial pursuits. The findings of this study extend our understanding of how entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs use emotions to construct their narratives of redemption that inspire action and align stakeholder perceptions.