Temporal semiotics: The past as an expression of the future

Abstract

This article investigates how semiotics constructs time as an effect of meaning and articulates past, present, and future. Drawing on Greimas and Courtés, it explores temporalization as a discursive process that transforms narrative sequences into meaningful chronologies. Based on Landowski, it analyzes the variation of temporal scales and regimes of meaning, showing how the pandemic revealed tensions between immediate and programmatic readings of the future. Through Flores, the article discusses enunciation as a space for the construction of the present, considering the subject’s position in relation to the narrated scene – whether as lived experience or current action. The argument put forth is that the past not only precedes but also prefigures the future – as inheritance, warning, promise, or threat. To support this, we employ modalities such as “can-be,” “must-be,” and “can-do,” which structure the meanings of time, highlighting the ways in which we project the future based on past experiences and present stances. Through this framework, semiotics enables a critical description of these processes, revealing how discourses mobilize memories and expectations in temporal narratives that shape the social, political, and cultural meanings of time.