“Stiff Business Headwinds and Uncharted Economic Waters”: The Use of Euphemisms in Earnings Conference Calls
Published Online:21 Jan 2021https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2020.3826
References
- (1996) The information content of the president’s letter to shareholders. J. Bus. Finance Accounting 23(8):1157–1182.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (1991) Euphemism & Dysphemism: Language Used as a Shield and as a Weapon (Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK).Google Scholar
- (2002) The “incomplete revelation hypothesis” and financial reporting. Accounting Horizons 16(3):233–243.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2018) Soft information in loan agreements. J. Accounting Auditing Finance 33(1):40–71.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2015) Differences in conference call tones: Managers vs. analysts. Financial Analyst J. 71(4):24–42.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2003) Open vs. closed conference calls: The determinants and effects of broadening access to disclosure. J. Accounting Econom. 34(1–3):149–180.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2018) Linguistic complexity in firm disclosures: Obfuscation or information? J. Accounting Res. 56(1):85–121.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2016) In search of interaction. Working paper, University of Texas at Austin, Texas.Google Scholar
- (2018) Oh what a beautiful morning! Diurnal influences on executives and analysts: Evidence from conference calls. Management Sci. 64(12):5899–5924.Link, Google Scholar
- (2006) Differential patterns of textual characteristics and company performance in the chairman’s statement. Accounting Auditing Accountability J. 19(4):493–511.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2020) Casting conference calls. Management Sci. 66(11):5015–5039.Google Scholar
- (1984) Overcoming the Pollyanna syndrome. Cross Currents 11(1):59–63.Google Scholar
- (1997) Measuring mutual fund performance with characteristic-based benchmarks. J. Finance 52(3):1035–1058.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2012) Beyond the numbers: Measuring the information content of earnings press release language. Contemporary Accounting Res. 29(3):845–868.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2010) Soft information in earnings announcements: News or noise? INSEAD Working Papers Collection 33:1–67.Google Scholar
- (2015) Tips and tells from managers: How the market reads between the lines of conference calls. NBER Working Paper No. 20991, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA.Google Scholar
- (1995) Critical Discourse Analysis (Longman, London).Google Scholar
- (1993) Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds. J. Financial Econom. 33(1):3–56.Google Scholar
- (1973) Risk, return, and equilibrium: Empirical tests. J. Political Econom. 81(3):607–636.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2010) Management’s tone change, post earnings announcement drift and accruals. Rev. Accounting Stud. 15(4):915–953.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2010) Correcting for cross-sectional and time-series dependence in accounting research. Accounting Rev. 85(2):483–512.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2005) The economic implications of corporate financial reporting. J. Accounting Econom. 40(1–3):3–73.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2011) Political correctness, euphemism, and language change: The case of ‘people first’. J. Pragmatics 43(3):828–840.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2008) Are investors influenced by how earnings press releases are written? J. Bus. Comm. 45(4):363–407.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (1981) The Pollyanna hypothesis in business writing: Initial results, suggestions for research. J. Bus. Comm. 18(1):5–15.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2003) Limited attention, information disclosure, and financial reporting. J. Accounting Econom. 36(1):337–338.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2009) Driven to distraction: Extraneous events and underreaction to earnings news. J. Finance 64(5):2289–2325.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2008) Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms (Oxford University Press, New York).Google Scholar
- (2010) Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 8th ed. (Oxford University Press, Oxford).Google Scholar
- (2018) Headline salience, managerial opportunism, and over- and underreactions to earnings. Accounting Rev. 93(6):231–255.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2014) Tone management. Accounting Rev. 89(3):1083–1113.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2019) Readability of 10-K reports and stock price crash risk. Contemporary Accounting Res. 36(2):1184–1216.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2009) Do managers withhold bad news? J. Accounting Res. 47(1):241–276.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2012) Detecting deceptive discussions in conference calls. J. Accounting Res. 50(2):495–540.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2016) Can investors detect managers’ lack of spontaneity? Adherence to predetermined scripts during earnings conference calls. Accounting Rev. 91(1):229–250.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2008) Annual report readability, current earnings, and earnings persistence. J. Accounting Econom. 45(2/3):221–247.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2016) Evasive shareholder meetings. J. Corporate Finance 38:318–334.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2011) When is a liability not a liability? Textual analysis, dictionaries, and 10-Ks. J. Finance 66(1):35–65.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2014) Regulation and financial disclosure: The impact of plain English. J. Regulatory Econom. 45(1):94–113.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (1996) The New Doublespeak. Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore (Harper Collins Publishers, New York).Google Scholar
- (2011) What makes conference calls useful? The information content of managers’ presentations and analysts’ discussion sessions. Accounting Rev. 86(4):1383–1414.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2008) Evidence of management discrimination among analysts during earnings conference calls. J. Accounting Res. 46(3):627–659.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2009) Estimating standard errors in finance panel data sets: Comparing approaches. Rev. Financial Stud. 22(1):435–480.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2009) Political correctness—A challenge to EFL teaching. Strani Jezici 38(2):169–178.Google Scholar
- (2012) Earnings conference calls and stock returns: The incremental informativeness of textual tone. J. Banking Finance 36(4):992–1011.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2006) Critical discourse analysis of euphemisation and derogation in emails on the late pope. Linguistics J. January(2). https://www.linguistics-journal.com/2014/01/09/a-critical-discourse-analysis-of-euphemization-and-derogation-in-emails-on-the-late-pope/.Google Scholar
- (1995) Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk: Being a Compilation of Linguistic Fig Leaves and Verbal Flourishes for Artful Users of the English Language (Crown Publishers, New York).Google Scholar
- (2014) Patterns of language use in accounting narratives and their impact on investment-related judgments and decisions. Behav. Res. Accounting 26(1):59–84.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2005) Genre analysis of corporate annual report narratives. A corpus linguistics-based approach. J. Bus. Comm. 42(4):349–378.Crossref, Google Scholar
- Securities and Exchange Commission (1998) A Plain English Handbook: How to Create Clear SEC Disclosure Documents (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington, DC), https://www.sec.gov/pdf/handbook.pdf.Google Scholar
- (2000) The chairman’s statement—A content analysis of discretionary narrative disclosures. Accounting Auditing Accountability J. 13(5):624–647.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2014) Changes in earnings announcement tone and insider sales. Adv. Accounting 30(2):276–282.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2006) Management going–concern disclosures: Impact of corporate governance and auditor reputation. Eur. Financial Management 12(5):789–816.Crossref, Google Scholar
- (2003) The discourse-knowledge interface. Weiss G, Wodak R, eds. Critical Discourse Analysis (Palgrave Macmillan, London), 85–109.Google Scholar
- (2014) The blame game. Working paper, Baruch College, City University of New York, New York.Google Scholar

