Abstract 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.

中文翻译：

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耸耸肩

摘要 耸肩是一个广泛共享的手势组合，它由几个不同的组成部分组成。这些包括：抬起肩膀；用伸展的手指向外旋转前臂到“手掌向上”的位置；嘴巴紧闭，向下拉嘴唇（“嘴巴耸肩”），这可能会或可能不会与抬高眉毛和将头部倾斜到一侧相结合。它包含丰富而一致的形式网络（单个组件或组件组合可以索引整个制定）。这些组成部分一起或以各种组合形式表现出无能、无能为力、不确定、冷漠、显而易见，我们认为这些都是由个人脱离的共同语义主题统一的。由于耸肩表达了语用意义，并且其形成和语义核心在不同的语境和说话者中保持稳定，因此耸肩也可以作为反复出现的手势。基于从以英语为母语的人之间二元互动的录像语料库中收集的经验证据，本研究提出了一种定性但系统的方法来提供耸肩的统一描述。