Identity Formation and Communication Through Entrepreneurial Pitching: Butler, Spivak, Crenshaw, and Menon on Gender, Language, and Power in Shark Tank India Season 2

Abstract

This study examines how language, identity and evaluative bias interact in female entrepreneurial pitches within a postcolonial, non-Western context and derives actionable implications for business and professional communication pedagogy. Drawing on thematic analysis of 16 broadcast-verified pitch transcripts from Shark Tank India Season 2 (January–March 2023), the study deploys an integrated four-framework theoretical architecture Butler’s gender performativity theory, Spivak’s subaltern theory, Crenshaw’s intersectional feminism, and Menon’s Indian feminist framework supplemented selectively by Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis at specific pitch moments. Five saturated themes are identified: Language Hierarchy as a Gatekeeping Mechanism, Self-Translation Labor, the Structural Speech-Reception Gap, Intersectional Compounding of Identity Disadvantage, and Counter-Hegemonic Voice and Communicative Resistance; theme Negotiation a sixth, emerging and Founder Agency in Deal-Making is reported provisionally from a subset of cases and flagged as requiring further validation. The study makes four contributions: to the best of our knowledge, one of the first thematic discourse analyses of Shark Tank India Season 2 with broadcast-verified data; a postcolonial feminist analytical architecture applied to pitch communication scholarship; the speech-reception gap as a named, operationalised analytical concept applicable to high-stakes professional evaluation contexts; and four Scholarship of Teaching and Learning-grounded pedagogical propositions, offered for classroom testing, for teaching pitch communication to multilingual, intersectionally diverse student populations. Findings carry implications for women’s economic empowerment, compound glass ceiling formation and the design of equitable business-communication curricula.