IN ORDER TO
a) Keyness
‘In
order to’ was the fifty-fifth most significant key three-word cluster in the
BEC corpus.
|
N |
Word |
bec freq. |
bec.lst % |
bnc freq. |
bnc.lst % |
Keyness |
P |
|
55 |
IN
ORDER TO |
190 |
0.02 |
151 |
- |
65.3 |
0.000000 |
b) Semantic Prosody
Left:
No groups identified.
Right: One group identified. The verbs
following ‘in order to’ were quite diverse, but the members of the group all
showed a positive goal, result or outcome of the action. Even seemingly negative
phrases had a positive connotation, e.g. in
order to + avoid: specifying how to pre-empt difficult situations (5
instances in the sample):
|
semantic prosody |
frequency/ 191 & % |
example |
|
positive
goal, result or outcome |
137
- 71.72% |
in
order to achieve a 25% increase in
order to allow maximum exploitation of
the box in
order to continuously improve in
order to win business in
order to secure airline contracts |
c) Clusters
6-word:
No
clusters of frequency >=3.
5-word:
|
N |
cluster |
Freq. |
|
1 |
in
order to provide the |
4 |
|
2 |
in
order to achieve a |
3 |
|
3 |
in
order to ensure that |
3 |
|
4 |
in
order to get the |
3 |
|
5 |
in
order to keep the |
3 |
|
6 |
in
order to make the |
3 |
|
7 |
in
order to update the |
3 |
4-word:
|
N |
cluster |
Freq. |
|
1 |
in
order to make |
8 |
|
2 |
in
order to achieve |
7 |
|
3 |
in
order to ensure |
6 |
|
4 |
in
order to keep |
6 |
|
5 |
in
order to avoid |
5 |
|
6 |
in
order to provide |
5 |
|
7 |
but
in order to |
4 |
|
8 |
in order
to allow |
4 |
|
9 |
in
order to compete |
4 |
|
10 |
in
order to determine |
4 |
|
11 |
in
order to get |
4 |
|
12 |
in
order to maintain |
4 |
|
13 |
in
order to obtain |
4 |
|
14 |
order
to provide the |
4 |
d) Macro-generic distribution
e) Colligation
i) in
order to + verb
191
instances - 100% of sample.
f) Associates
‘In
order to’ was key in 5 files. The only associate of
frequency > =5 was ‘in order to’ itself.
Comments
1. This
cluster has an overwhelmingly positive semantic prosody. Over 70% of the
examples are directly positive and the rest are neutral.
