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Article published In:
Gesture
Vol. 16:1 (2017) ► pp.1–34

The shrug

Forms and meanings of a compound enactment

| Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense

The shrug is a widely shared gesture ensemble with several different components. These include: lifting the shoulders; rotating the forearms outwards with extended fingers to a “palm up” position; with mouth firmly closed, pulling the lips downwards (the “mouth shrug”), which may or may not be combined with raising the eyebrows and tilting the head to one side. It comprises a rich yet consistent network of forms (a single component or a combination of components can index the whole enactment). These components, together or in various combinations, are shown to express incapacity, powerlessness, indetermination, indifference, obviousness which, we suggest, are unified by a common semantic theme of personal disengagement. Since the shrug expresses pragmatic meanings and its formational and semantic core remains stable across different contexts and speakers, the shrug also qualifies as a recurrent gesture. Based on empirical evidence gathered from a videotaped corpus of dyadic interactions between native speakers of British English, this study proposes a qualitative-yet-systematic method to provide a unified account of shrugging.

Keywords: shrug, emblem, recurrent gesture, compositionality, gesture complexity, compound enactment
Article outline
  • Is the shrug an emblem?
  • Corpus and method for an empirical study of shrugging
  • Formal variations of a compound enactment
  • Multiple meanings unified by a semantic theme
    • Attitudinal shrugs: incapacity and inaction
    • Affective distance: shrugging as indifference and rejection
    • Epistemic “I don’t know” and “you know” shrugs
    • A common semantic theme
  • Emerging forms-functions patterns
  • Conclusion: the shrug as a recurrent gesture
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References


This article is currently available as a sample article.

Published online: 29 June 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/gest.16.1.01deb
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