A shrug is a gesture or posture performed by raising both shoulders. In certain countries, it is a representation of an individual either being indifferent about something or not knowing an answer to a question.[1]
Shrugging
The shoulder-raising action may be accompanied by rotating the palms upwards, pulling closed lips downwards, raising the eyebrows or tilting the head to one side.[2] A shrug is an emblem, meaning that it integrates the vocabulary of only certain cultures and may be used in place of words.[3] In many countries, such as the United States, Sweden and Morocco, a shrug represents hesitation or lack of knowledge; however, in other countries, such as Japan and China, shrugging is uncommon and is not used to show hesitation. People from the Philippines, Iran and Iraq may interpret a shrug as a somewhat impolite sign of confidence.[4]
Gallic shrug
The Gallic shrug, "generally a nuanced gesture with myriad meanings",[5] is performed by sticking out your lower lip, raising your eyebrows and shoulders simultaneously,[6][7][8][9][10] and voicing a nonchalant bof.[11]
Emoji
The shrug gesture is a Unicodeemoji included as U+1F937🤷SHRUG.[12]
The shrug emoticon, better known as the shruggie, made from Unicode characters, is also typed as ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, where "ツ" is the character tsu from Japanese katakana.[13]
^Jokinen, Kristiina; Allwood, Jens (2010). "Hesitation in Intercultural Communication: Some Observations and Analyses on Interpreting Shoulder Shrugging". In Ishida, Toru (ed.). Culture and Computing: Computing and Communication for Crosscultural Interaction. Vol. 6259. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. pp. 55–70. doi:10.1007/978-3-642-17184-0_5. ISBN978-3-642-17183-3. ISSN0302-9743.