Time and Meaning: A Cultural Semiotics of Temporal and Aspectual Ideologies

Cultures can be categorized depending on whether they concentrate their attention on the past, the present, or the future, and depending on whether this attention is euphoric, dysphoric, or neutral (Leone 2014 _Longing_). The present essay intends to complexify such articulation through suggesting that it might include also aspectuality and be traversed by the three semiotic dimensions of indexical reference to the ontology of time, iconic representation of it, and symbolical evocation of it. In other words, cultures do not diverge only in terms of 'whe'n in time they focus their attention on, but also in terms of 'how' in time they do so.