Piercings as Semiotic Assemblages for Meaning Making
Introduction:
Despite the growing interest in semiotic landscapes, piercings remain an underexplored site for meaning-making within the field of Linguistic Landscape Studies. Piercings, small holes pierced into the body, typically the ears, and adorned with jewelry, are an underdeveloped field for examining non-verbal and non-written forms of communication.
Since previous literature is scarce, this paper draws on existing scholarship that focuses primarily on tattoos as a parallel mode of body modification to inform its analysis and scholarship on piercings that do not focus on the field of linguistics. Peck and Stroud’s (2015) concept of skinscapes includes the body as living corporeal landscapes where bodily inscriptions like tattoos, and by extension, piercings, are key semiotic tools for understanding place and identity. To categorize the potential intentions behind a students piercing, this paper relies on Wohlrab et al.’s (2007) ten motivational categories behind obtaining body piercings: beauty, art, and fashion, individuality, personal narratives, physical endurance, group affiliations and commitment, resistance, spirituality and cultural tradition, addiction, sexual motivations, and no specific reason. Tiggerman and Hopkins (2011) delved into studying how the emplacement of piercings and tattoos can reflect different motivations such as facial piercings reflect more motivations for individuality than ear piercings, providing an interesting question as to whether this study will find differences in the motivations and projected meanings of piercings based on piercing placement and visibility.
This study takes place at Emory University, a private liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, since this is the population I have the greatest access to. The study focuses specifically on the undergraduate population, drawing participants primarily between the ages of 18 and 22. Emory University’s website boasts a diverse undergraduate population with 66 nations and 50 states represented in the 5,727 Emory College enrolled students; however, Emory University’s largest population is White students, followed by Asian students, and other races and ethnicities are represented less significantly within Emory University’s demographics. Since piercings are more common among women and Emory has a higher number of female students, the majority of participants in this study are women. However, I purposefully sought out at least one male participant in order to gain a broader understanding of the topic in regards to gender.
This research seeks to answer the following questions: What meanings do Emory undergraduate students attach to their piercings and how might this differ due to personal identity factors such as gender, race, religion and age? How do Emory University undergraduate students intend their piercings to be interpreted by others? And how does considering piercings as semiotic assemblages for meaning making contribute to the broader semiotic landscape of Emory University?
Methodology:
Figure 1: Ear Piercing Placement
Figure 2: Face Piercing Placement
I collected data through both a short survey and five longer-form interviews. The survey collected age range, gender identity and piercing placement ads indicated in Figure 1 and Figure 2. To gather participants, I created a link to the survey on my Instagram. Survey participants were asked to check off relevant motivations from Wohlrab et al.’s (2007) ten categories for obtaining piercings. They responded to a yes/no question asking whether their piercings convey meaning. Lastly, it includes a mandatory open-ended response box to a question inquiring further on their piercing motivations and meanings. The purpose of the survey was to identify general patterns in piercing motivations for undergraduate students as well as collect a wide variety of meanings created by participants’ piercings.
I found my interview participants through word of mouth in my social circle. I interviewed five subjects: two male, and three female. I aimed to include a range of identities across gender, sexual orientation, race, and religion to account for the varied sociocultural factors that may inform piercing decisions. Furthermore, I interviewed participants with a wide array of piercings: one male and female with no piercings, one male with earlobe piercings, one female with eleven ear piercings, and one female with multiple body piercings and ear piercings.
My interview questions were formatted into 5 topics: background information, piercing information, piercing motivations, piercing communication, and piercings in relation to Emory’s linguistic landscape. For participants without piercings, I tailored the questions to focus on their decision not to get pierced and how they believe that choice is interpreted socially, especially within the Emory University context.
Results:
Survey:
The survey garnered 47 responses from Emory undergraduate students, primarily through word of mouth and my own Instagram; therefore, my responses skew towards my own demographics: 18-20 and female. 78.7% of responders are between 18 and 20, with the remaining 21.3% being between 21 and 23. Most piercings were concentrated on the ears, with 14 participants having a single set of earlobe piercings, 16 participants having multiple sets of earlobe piercings, and 10 participants having earlobe piercings and alternate ear piercings such as a helix, conch or daith. Only 3 participants had mostrel piercings, 3 disclosed belly button (naval) piercings and one participant had nipple piercings. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 for clarification on the professional names of ear and face piercings.
As figure 3 indicates, 80.9% of responders identify as female, 14.9% male, and 4.3% non-binary. The gender demographics of my survey respondents do not align with those reported in Quarata et al.’s (2011) study on piercing prevalence among undergraduate students, which found that 79.8% of students with piercings were female and 20.2% were male whereas males with piercings only make up 6.4% of my participants.
Figure 3: Gender Ratio
Figure 4: WordCloud of Survey Responses
As Figure 5 indicates, Beauty & Fashion is by far the most frequent motivation with 74.5% of participants. 17% of participants said they had no motivations at all leaving only 8.5% whose motivations did not include Beauty & Fashion. The word cloud in Figure 4, charting common word choices for piercing meanings, reinforces this motivation with “pretty”, “cool”, “aesthetic”, “cute”, “style”, and “fashion” being amongst the most recurrent words from the survey. Every instance of Individuality chosen as a motivation was in connection with Beauty & Fashion. There were 62 overall motivations cited for only 40 participants with piercing, revealing that motivations were often layered. Four people cited that they only had piercings due to their parents’ choice to pierce their ears at a young age revealing a motivation unaccounted for in Wohlrab et al.’s (2007) categories.
Figure 5: Survey results according to Wohlrab et al. ‘s (2007) Motivational Categories
One final result from the survey, as outlined in Figure 6, is that 52.5% of participants thought their piercings communicated something to others and 47.5% did not think their piercing communicated anything to others. However, only three people cited that they did not have any motivations behind their piercings.
Figure 6: Do you think your piercings communicate something to others?
Interviews:
My interview with AN, a 19 year old female, revolved around her decision not to get any piercings. She stated that she has never had any desire before college but that she feels that people regard her as less feminine or desirable and is planning on piercing her ears in the near future. AR, a 20 year old woman with nipple, belly button and ear piercings discusses how her piercings differentiate her from others and make her look “cooler”. She cites her upbringing in Denver, Colorado, as a factor for her piercings as subcultures are very common in her family and city. KN, a 19 year old queer woman with eleven ear piercings, talked about how her piercings represent her agency from her parents, her queerness and her style. VJ, a 21 year old male, discussed his double earlobe piercings and helix as a way to communicate his queerness and fashion. TJ, a 20 year old male, cited his lack of piercings as both a lack of desire and a fear of parental disapproval.
Discussion:
The results of my study support the original hypothesis that piercings among Emory University undergraduate students are semiotic tools that communicate meaning. Within this specific demographic, piercings are most often used to communicate personal identity, social affiliations, and aesthetic values. Like Wohlrab et al. (2007), I also found that Beauty & Fashion and Individuality were the most frequent motivations behind piercings. However, in conjunction with my open-ended question responses and interviews, I found that motivations are often more layered and complex than the strict categories allowed for. Peck & Stroud (2015) argued for the inclusion of body modifications in linguistic landscape studies as semiotic assemblages for meaning-making and my findings further support that conclusion.
The dominant motivation of Beauty & Fashion underscores a recurrent idea that, even if participants did not believe their piercings communicated anything, they “invited conversations”, because, as KN stated “a person’s aesthetic is why you go up to people a lot of the time”. Communicating someone’s aesthetic is still communication! Furthermore, the connection between Beauty & Fashion and Individuality may seem superficial, but when contextualized with interview data, it reveals a negotiation between self-expression and social norms. For example, participants with nontraditional or a larger amount of piercings often saw their modifications as acts of agency, especially queer students and women resisting parental or gender expectations. KN and VJ interpreted their piercings as assertions of queerness and independence. Meanwhile, the experience of AN, who had no piercings, showed that the absence of piercings can itself be a visible marker of non-conformity as it could be interpreted as lacking femininity.
As indicated by Figure 6, only 52.5% of survey participants thought their piercings communicated something to others, however every individual in the 47.5% who said their piercings did not communicate anything chose a motivation and elaborated in the open-ended question on the meaning of their piercing. In the future, I would have elaborated on what I defined as “communicating something” to be as broad as answers like “that I’m cool/pretty” or “that I’m independent”, since some people who said their piercings did not communicate anything later cited ways people may perceive them differently due to their piercings as reasons behind their piercings.
The gender ratio may be due to biased outreach or the demographics of Emory’s undergraduate class; however, it also reflects American society’s gendered view on piercings. Piercing are often associated closely with femininity, a topic that came up in all three of my interviews with female participants. AN, a woman with no piercings, said that she feels like people regard her as less feminine due to that choice, and KN and AR, two women with piercings, cited being in touch with their femininity as aspects of their piercings. Figure 4 shows a WordCloud made of recurring words throughout the survey responses to a question about what their piercings communicate. The words “feminine”, ‘femininity’, “womanhood” and “women” were frequently cited as the reasons behind choosing to have piercings. On the other hand, for men, since piercings are associated with femininity and men showing femininity is often assumed as inherently queer, it is often seen as either an indicator of queerness. Some men find that discouraging; one survey response cited that he did not get any piercings because he did not want to be seen as gay. Some queer men use that to build community. In my interview with VJ, he said he got his ears pierced as a signifier to other queer men. Certain non-traditional piercings or the very fact of having many piercings can be a signifier for queer women to assert their queerness, as KN stated in her interview, which is a statement that I relate to as a factor behind my own unconventional piercing. I believe that the rejection of the social norms for women is also a rejection of heteronormative expectations and that is what lends itself to queer expression in women. Overall, the queerness communicated through these piercings is not necessarily about the piercing itself, but rather the conscious departure from normative gender expectations surrounding how men and women’s bodies should be adorned through the piercings.
Whilst my findings did align with Wohlrab et al. (2007) in finding Beauty & Fashion and Individuality were the most common motivations, I would hypothesize that Emory’s age and ethnic demographics limited the amount of participants who would have chosen other motivations, such as physical endurance, addiction, sexual motives, spirituality and culture traditions and group affiliations. Future studies surveilling piercing parlors, subculture sites like concerts or religious institutions may reveal entirely different results and I suspect will show an even stronger correlation between piercings and meaning-making. In the future, I would look to compare how students perceive each other’s piercings versus how faculty and staff do because I suspect that age and socialization are huge contributing factors behind not just piercing motivations and communication but also piercing perceptions and what meaning is grasped.
The findings confirm that students have layered meanings for their piercings and that these meanings are shaped by factors like gender, sexuality, and cultural background. And, although some participants claimed their piercings did not communicate meaning, their own descriptions contradicted this, revealing the embedded semiotic potential of piercings even when not consciously acknowledged. This study contributes to the growing body of linguistic landscape research by expanding the focus beyond signage to include the body as a site of meaning-making. By situating piercings within linguistic landscape theory, it reveals how body modifications can shape and reflect the cultural, gendered, and aesthetic expectations of a place like Emory. Lastly, in a country where bodily autonomy and gender expression are highly politicized, understanding and respecting how people choose to communicate identity, affiliation, and personality through their bodies is imperative to a more tolerant future.
References:
Cherry Bomb Studio
https://www.cherrybomb.studio/blog/piercing-names-and-locations
Facts and Stats. Emory University Office of Undergraduate Admissions.
https://apply.emory.edu/discover/facts-stats/index.html
Peck, A., Stroud, C. (2015). Skinscapes. Linguistic Landscape 1, 133–151.
Quaranta, A., Napoli, C., Fasano, F., Montagna, C., Caggiano, G., Montagna, M. Body Piercing and Tattoos: a Survey on Young Adults Knowledge of the Risks and Practices in Body Art. BMC Public Health.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3196715
Tiggemann, M., Hopkins, L. (2011). Tattoos and piercings: Bodily expressions of uniqueness? Body Image, Volume 8, Issue 3, 245-250
https://www.scilit.com/publications/372c79d52e7ae17f13edad86c9d2a575
Wohlrab, S., Stahl, J., Kappeler, P. (2007). Modifying the body: Motivations for getting tattooed and pierced. Body Image, Volume 4, Issue 1.
Modifying the body: Motivations for getting tattooed and pierced
