Semiotics and culture: The perception of time as a semiotic problem

Abstract

The perception of time is culturally conditioned which means that in different cultures time may be experienced – perceived, conceptualized and evaluated – in diverse ways. The distinction between past, present and future seems to be a universal phenomenon, but the relations of these categories may be different in different cultural codes. The author defines two models of temporal perception, ‘historical’ and ‘cosmological’, analysing the conceptualization of time in each of them.