A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of Entrepreneurship in Entre-tainment

Abstract

Over the past decade entrepreneurship has featured heavily in spheres of entertainment such as television. The term “entre-tainment” (Down, 2010) has been coined to capture the merging of, entrepreneurship and entertainment (Swail et al, 2014). One form of “entre-tainment” that has become widespread through international and globalised replication by approximately forty different countries is the format of reality television programmes such as Dragons’ Den which was the first version of the series in the English language. This thesis critically unpacks (i) the discourses of entrepreneurship in popular culture surrounding this specific entre-tainment genre, and (ii) what these discourses do, through Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis. Three datasets are analysed, which will be referred to as ‘Layers’. Layer 1 is the discourse within the episodes of three versions of the television show, which are (i) Dragons’ Den (UK), (ii) Shark Tank (USA) and (iii) Planting Seeds (Caribbean). Layer 2 surrounds media produced by the show that is external to the episodes aired, and Layer 3 focuses on content produced by others about the shows. Reviewing discourses across different Layers enhances the insight of the interdiscursivity of entrepreneurship as constructed across social, cultural, and institutional divides, as this research is not solely limited to the discourses confined within the television shows but expands to include those from and about the shows. Entre-tainment was found to legitimise a version of entrepreneurship that values wealth above all else. This was achieved by positioning the desire and attainment of extreme individual wealth as morally and socially acceptable, thus naturalising this ideology while obscuring alternative motivations and types of entrepreneurship. Entre-tainment was also found to give celebrity entrepreneurs the power to influence public opinion not only in areas of business, but also in areas of social life unrelated to business enterprise, such as academia, government policy, marriage, parenting, and managing personal finances. This work contributes to the area of critical entrepreneurship studies as it fills the gap for research concerned with the influence cultural representations have had on re-imagining the entrepreneur (e.g. Jones & Spicer, 2009).