Entrepreneurship as a Rhetorical Process

Rhetoric had an enormous significance in Ancient Greece. Although rhetoric has lost its importance for a time, it has regained popularity in the second part of twentieth century via linguistic turn in social sciences. Even thought practitioners' literature strongly emphasizes importance of persuasion in entrepreneurial processes, there seems only limited number of academic studies that link entrepreneurship and rhetoric. This study aims to clarify our understanding about use of persuasion in entrepreneurial process via rhetoric analysis. More specifically, the study aims to answer the questions such as " whom do entrepreneurs use rhetoric to persuade? " and " which rhetoric is used to persuade other actors? ". Therefore, it can be said that it has an exploratory nature. With this aim, some articles and news about entrepreneurship and persuasion were collected and analyzed. The findings showed that entrepreneurs need to persuade themselves and various actors such as investors, teammates, customer/consumers, families, inner circles and suppliers during the process. Finally, it was also found that Logos was the most preferred rhetorical strategy.