Patterns of Commemoration: The Texas Historical Markers Program.

In this article, we explore the text of more than 16,000 historical markers erected in Texas since 1936 to try and understand how the state tells its story to the public. To do so, we use geographic information systems (kernel density and Moran's I statistics) and corpus linguistics (CL) to determine the where, what, who, when, and how of commemoration in Texas. Our results show very distinct spatiotemporal and thematic patterns in the distribution of markers in Texas, with markers concentrated in the eastern half of the state and in the most populated areas. As measured by kernel density, cores of commemoration moved from Austin in the 1930s through the 1960s to Dallas in the 1970s and 1980s and then to Houston in the 1990s through the 2010s. What emerges from CL's semantical analysis is a thematical transition that occurred in the 1970s and continues today, from narratives of war and conflict to narratives of peace, family, and community. As measured by Moran's I statistics, this shift is especially evident in the populous eastern part of the state. Overall, the markers offer a vision of Texas as a unique land shaped by interactions between multiple groups in the context of a historic borderland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]