Students interpret historical culture: Insights from two data collection settings in an exploratory design

This article asks how students interpret objectivations of historical culture and how far data collection settings pre-structure observable interpretive action. Drawing on cultural semiotics, historical culture is conceptualised as a sign system where meaning emerges relationally between sign-carriers and recipients’ reference concepts; the research setting is treated as part of the semiosis under study. Using the documentary method, group discussions with students from various school types are analysed in two settings: sequential discussions of three objectivations (Hermann Monument, Maurizio Cattelan's sculpture Him (2001), TikTok search results) and of ten photographic icons, varied through wildcards, reasoned selection and Instagram comments. Four groups serve as illustrative cases. Across groups, a shared sequence of interpretive operations emerges (activating knowledge, naming, contextualising, interpreting elements, evaluating morally), whose depth and reflexivity differ. The article contributes a semiotic vocabulary for students’ participation in historical culture and proposes deliberate variation of elicitation settings as a heuristic data source. All findings are exploratory hypotheses.