Journal #5 (Tattoos)

I believe that the three most important concepts that have been covered in this course so far are place/scene, rhetorical situation, and meaning/individual interpretation. Place/scene aligns well with tattoos because the way in which a tattoo is placed on the body can affect the way that it is seen by the audience. An example of this is that people seen to subconsciously agree that women with tattoos on their lower back are perceived as "easy," i.e. the name "tramp stamp". Scene also plays a role in the way people understand tattoos because a person's image may influence the type of tattoo they choose to get, and it also may influence the audience's view of the tattoo. Rhetorical situation can be shown through the use of tattoos with the example used throughout Dan Brouwer's article. Rhetorical situation includes a problem, also known as exigence, and an action to modify the problem; which in turn elicits some type of reaction from the audience. In the case of the article, written by Brouwer, the problem was that people who are HIV positive wanted to be able to communicate to the public that they have this disease. The modification to this problem is that willing HIV positive people were tattooed with the HIV/AIDS tattoo. The audience is a number of people, but I would assume that it would make a community feel safer that they are able to see with a tattoo who has HIV. Brouwer talks about being seen by an audience, "... visibility is defined as as presenting oneself, in mediated or unmediated form, in public forums." (p. 426) The meaning of a tattoo and the individual interpretation can be linked and also completely opposite in different cases. The meaning of a tattoo is completely in the mind of the person who has the tattoo, and whomever they choose to share this meaning with. The individual interpretation of a tattoo can be the way that the audience views the tattoo, which can be completely unrelated to the meaning of the tattoo. The way the person interprets their own tattoo is almost the exact same as the meaning of it, interpreting a tattoo just goes more into detail about the meaning and reason behind getting the tattoo. In the article, Brouwer the meaning of the HIV/AIDS tattoo to the person who has it is a sort of identification with themselves as to who they are, the interpretation of the tattoo is up to the audience and the individual person whom the tattoo belongs to.

I believe that we can consider tattooing everyday writing for the above reasons I explained, because it does very much so fit into the three most important concepts of everyday writing. I also believe that tattooing is everyday writing because it is often frowned upon by the institution to have or give tattoos, because it is not taught in school and is not learned by people who have been taught in school. Although not all people get tattoos in spite of the "man," at the beginning of the tattoo era, I do believe this was the original intention.