This study aims to investigate how evaluative meanings are constructed in digital discourse relating to dark tourism. Attention is given to how visitors connect history, learning, and family and school contexts in their experiences at massacre memorials. It examines how visitors express their attitudes towards historical trauma and learning-related engagement. A corpus-based approach was used to analyse 1,360 digital visitor comments (totalling 118,099 English words) drawn from three major WWII massacre memorials in China. Macro-level collocational analysis is employed to identify recurring collocational and evaluative patterns in history-related and learner-related discourse. Meanwhile, micro-level contextual concordance analysis examines how parents, teachers, and learners are positioned in these visitor narratives. The findings show that judgement resources evaluate the moral implications of war and social responsibility, while appreciation resources further construct these memorials as important learning spaces and highlight concerns about pedagogical suitability. Also, representations of historical events are closely linked to moral judgements. References to children and students are frequently framed within institutional and familial contexts through schooling and adult guidance. The study contributes to the ongoing investigation of dark tourism and discourse analysis by demonstrating how appraisal resources in digital narratives support the intergenerational transmission of historical remembrance and social values.
Yau Ni Wan (Tue,) studied this question.