"Significant Consistency Analysis" contrasts one Consistency List with another. In this case I've contrasted a consistency list based on 18 annual business reports in English produced by Brazilian companies, with 480 arbitrarily selected text files from the BNC and Guardian.

The reports seem to be concerned with processes (consolidating, modernization, capitalization) people (stockholders) places (Brazil, São Paulo), etc. Unfortunately, some words (program, centers, favorable) come up especially high in significance because of US spelling: I shall have to repeat the study with, say 500 texts in US English. Nevertheless, we get some idea. Actually, the most interesting word here may well turn out to be accordance. I shall have to do a concordance on this item to see whether it means that business report writers are highly concerned with meeting pre-established norms.

What does it mean? Well, first of all, grammatical items have filtered themselves out. No stop list was in operation: it's simply that the, of, was, etc. are highly consistent words in both annual business reports and a mixed bag of texts. These are lexical items which are found in many or most of the annual reports but not often in the control set of texts.

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