30.4136, Review: Sociolinguistics: Martin (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-4136. Fri Nov 01 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.4136, Review: Sociolinguistics: Martin (2018)

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Date: Fri, 01 Nov 2019 13:39:41
From: Andrew Jocuns [jocunsa at gmail.com]
Subject: The Social Semiotics of Tattoos

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36528757


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-422.html

AUTHOR: Chris William Martin
TITLE: The Social Semiotics of Tattoos
SUBTITLE: Skin and Self
SERIES TITLE: Bloomsbury Advances in Semiotics
PUBLISHER: Bloomsbury Publishing (formerly The Continuum International Publishing Group)
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Andrew Jocuns, Thammasat University

SUMMARY

Over twenty years ago right after I was discharged from a short stint in the
military I met someone at a party who was asking about my military experience
and one of the questions he asked was to see my tattoos. To his chagrin I had
none to offer. This anecdote touches on a point that is raised by Chris
William Martin’s ethnography on the social semiotics of tattoos, that until
quite recently tattoos were considered deviant or more closely associated with
certain segments of the population, e.g. veterans, bikers. The book is a well
written and very engaging ethnographic text on tattoo artists and tattoo
enthusiasts comprising eight chapters and an appendix. The audience for this
work is quite varied: undergraduates, graduate students and professionals who
are interested in contemporary ethnographic accounts that take a social
semiotic as well as symbolic interactionist stance. I would also add that the
book is accessible to non-academic audiences so tattoo artists and enthusiasts
would also find the book a worthy read. The book makes strong use of symbolic
interactionism in its ethnographic stance and fits well within the
ethnographic literature from the Chicago School of Sociology.

Introduction

The introduction lays out the problem under investigation, an ethnography of
tattoo artists at a place referred to as the Studio and tattoo enthusiasts in
“liquid modern times” (page 2). Liquid modernity is a concept which is
frequently referred to in this book and refers to how modernity creates a
chaotic sense of identity in a continuation of modernity, not post-modern,
where people can shift quickly between social positions and identities. The
concept was coined by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman who notes how liquid
modern humans frequently shift jobs, relationships, spouses, living
conditions, and values in a liquid and increasingly mobile manner. The
introduction also includes some reflexive ethnographic narrative about another
theme that emerges in the book, “getting inked,” where notions of the anxiety
of permanence fill tattoo enthusiasts prior to getting a tattoo. A brief
history of tattooing is offered followed by a discussion of how the notion of
deviance and tattoos has begun to shift into an era of wider acceptance of
tattoos in western society, noting a 2008 Pew research poll that notes 40% of
millennials surveyed claimed to have a tattoo. The author argues that in
liquid modernity there has been a noticeable change in the semiotic meanings
of tattoos in terms of cultural patterns and artistic meanings for both tattoo
artists and tattoo enthusiasts.

Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical and methodological practices that the
author used in implementing this ethnography. The author covers such paradigms
as symbolic interactionism, specifically Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical
approach to social interaction. Noting that detailed observation is more
integral to argumentation than abstract theoretical accounts, the author
emphasizes Goffman’s “definition of the situation” as the way to describe
appropriate behavior in public. While the definitions and framework the author
provides are solid, the real strength in this chapter is how each definition
is provided an example from interaction in The Studio. For example on page 26
Goffman’s concept of frontstage/backstage is introduced and notes how he
experienced this, “…I tended to see the front stage and the forefront of the
back stage. I personally witnessed the shifting of the persona of these
artists from confident to nervous, from truthful to deceitful.” This kind of
example emphasizes not only the position that the ethnographer took up in The
Studio, but also what access he had to the positioning of tattoo enthusiasts
and tattoo artists. The weaknesses of Goffman’s approach, semiotics and social
semiotics are taken up in the remaining sections of the chapter. Of note, in
terms of semiotics and social semiotics, the author mentions how there is no
grammar of tattoos but rather there are multiple meanings of a tattoo which
can be personal as well as cultural. However, a set of expectations in terms
of a tattoo code does exist as far as genre, style, etc.

Chapter 2 is the first analytical chapter and focuses upon ethnographic
experiences in The Studio which weaves together the interactional dynamics of
Goffman with the semiotics of Danesi. One of the takeaways from the book as a
whole is how the author discusses the anxiety and self-doubt that fills the
tattoo artists about how they accomplish their work, which the author mentions
occasionally through Goffman’s facework and face-saving strategies. “Lines can
easily be blown out or skin can be chewed up” (page 39). The data comes from
first person reflexive narrative experiences within the author’s fieldnotes as
well as photographs of The Studio. Another theme in the book that emerges from
this chapter is the role of performative deception in a tattoo artist, Kraken,
who claims to be more acclaimed as an artist than the work he can pull off. He
ultimately leaves the studio without a notice.

Chapter 3 focuses upon recent cultural shifts with the emergence of some
significant tattoo artists and custom tattooing, tattoo artists are now
considered artists, what the author refers to as the artification of
tattooing. The author notes the role of art school trained tattooists, who
were able to find more lucrative work as tattoo artists than as artists, as
one of the forces behind this shift from transgression to acceptance and
artform. Tattoos have now been transformed from “flash pieces” to works of
art. The chapter also focuses upon the tools of the trade of tattooing, which
includes a lot more intricate technology than a non-intimate may imagine (coil
machines, ink, rotary machines, elastic bands). Another interesting discussion
is on the craft of tattooing, in which tattooing and traditional tattoo
artists learned the craft through a mentor-apprentice relationship. Such
issues as authorship of tattoos, competition and permanence are taken up in
that latter part of the chapter. The author recounts a story of a client who
wanted a tattoo on his neck, which none of the artists in the studio agreed to
do, not because of where it was located, but over concern for potentially
being responsible for a tattoo that the client may regret in the future, thus
exemplifying how contemporary tattoo artists take permanence into
consideration.

Chapter 4 discusses notions of self and the body as well as identity. The
notion of one’s self-identity as being the primary reason that one gets
“inked” leads into a discussion of the social semiotic analysis taken up in
the next three chapters influenced by Danesi’s (2007) questions for effective
semiotic analysis and Riggins’ (1990) analysis of domestic artifacts. For the
latter the focus of the analysis is on referencing and mapping. Referencing
analyzes the tattoo from a cultural/artistic/historic understanding of the
object in question. Mapping allows the tattoo enthusiast to explain the
meanings and history of their interest in the tattoo in question. The analysis
that follows is very detailed in terms of the history of an object as well as
the interview conducted with tattoo enthusiasts. A good example of this is the
discussion of Harry’s tattoo; Harry has tattoos that symbolize his priesthood
of the Temple of Set, loosely related to Satanism. The author goes into great
detail about the history and significance of the symbols and the Temple of Set
itself and its relation to Satanism and how Harry perceives and feels about
the tattoos in question.

Chapter 5 Martin conducts a similar analysis of several tattoo enthusiasts but
here the focus is upon gender and tattoos. The more powerful analysis in this
chapter focuses on Helen’s tattoos one of which are ice skates. These are in
honor of her father who encouraged her interest in playing hockey despite
there being little opportunity for her to play as there was no girl’s hockey
program in her town. The author also notes in this chapter how women’s
tattooed bodies were considered far more transgressive than those of men. This
is further exemplified in the discussion of Rachael whose grandmother referred
to her and her tattoos as “damaged goods” (page 135). 

Chapter 6 discusses how tattoos can serve as forms of art. as well as
emotional signifiers or remembrances of people. The author takes up the notion
of tattoo classicism where “…form over expression becomes the key signifier”
(page 147). The example of the latter is a tattoo on Helen which is
reminiscent of Pablo Picasso’s artwork as well as how photographic realism has
become a significant feature of modern tattoo artistry. Howard Becker’s book
Art Worlds (1984) takes up a few pages in this chapter, particularly how
Becker notes that art worlds are defined by all of the people who come
together to make art happen. This ranges from the artist, to the enthusiast,
to the benefactor, etc. In short, the consumption and production of art are
socio-culturally produced. The chapter concludes with the discussion of a
memorial tattoo meant to represent a tattoo enthusiasts two siblings who
passed away at very young ages. 

Conclusions provide a short summary of the research presented in the book,
potential future research, which includes examining tattooing and its
emotional labor, and final remarks, noting the focus on professionalism,
artification and social interaction that have changed the perception of
tattoos and tattooing.

EVALUATION

If there is a criticism of this work it would have concern how it stands as an
ethnographic text. The author mentions that 1 years’ worth of ethnography was
conducted for this project; yet the attention to it in this book is bound up
in two chapters and the appendix. The latter is where I will focus my
criticism because a lot of interesting and important contextual information is
left in the appendix, which seems to focus solely on the methods. There are
some good reflexive ethnographic narratives that are left hanging in the
appendix that should have been worked into the individual chapters and would
have made the early chapters, which focused on the ethnography, much stronger.
Another criticism is in how the two different analyses were not really
connected. I feel the author could have had a chapter where the larger
ethnography of the Studio and the interviews with tattoo enthusiasts were
connected in a nexus or network type of analysis to illustrate how tattoo
artists and enthusiasts are related in complex ways. 

I disagree with the author’s discussion of how field theory (i.e. Bourdieu
1979) would not work for the present study. Specifically, with regard to the
notion of habitus, I don’t know how you can talk about tattoos and their
history without taking into account the historical bodies of the social
actors? In fact, the author accomplishes this task with the analysis of
referencing and then mapping the history of the individual tattoo enthusiast’s
explanation of the choices that were involved in the tattoos. Despite these
criticisms, this work is a very strong ethnographic text which fuses together
social semiotics and ethnography in a very accessible form.

REFERENCES

Bauman, Z. (2012). Liquid modernity. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Becker, H. S. (1984). Art worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press,.

Bourdieu, P. (1979). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste.
London: Routledge 

Danesi, M. (2007). The quest for meaning: A guide to semiotic theory and
practice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Riggins, S. H. (1990). The power of things: The role of domestic objects in
the presentation of self. In S. H. Riggins (Ed.), Beyond Goffman: Studies on
Communication, Institution and Social Interaction (pp. 341–367). Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter.

Riggins, S. H. (1994). Fieldwork in the Living Room: An Autoethnographic
Essay. In S. H. Riggins (Ed.), The Socialness of Things: Essays on the
Socio-semiotics of Objects (pp. 101–147). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Goffman, E. (1999). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Anchor
Books/Doubleday.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Andrew Jocuns is a sociolinguist who has conducted research on discourse and
learning in the United States and Southeast Asia with a particular focus on
Indonesia. He has held positions in both academia and government. Presently he
teaches courses in linguistics at Thammasat University in Thailand where he is
also conducting research on: linguistic landscapes, intercultural
communication, and Thai English.





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