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rather than to the particular gesture. Following this line of thought, it seems safe to
assume that the gesture is used to emphasize the speaker's uncertainty, or to add
“don't care” -type meaning association - as some subjects described the gesture. In
fact, it may be justified to conclude that the shoulder shrug in this particular case has a
status of an independent communicative act itself, i.e. after the unfinished utterance
it's just a
, the speaker continues with a shoulder shrug to finish off the sentence with a
gesture expression in order to indicate that it is not important to express, or that he is
not able to express the actual content in words.
4 Conclusions and Future Work
The current work is based on an interview study of subjects with different cultural
background, concerning their interpretation of a particular shoulder shrugging. We
confirmed the previous hypothesis of the distinction between Eastern and Western
cultures, and the differences in interpreting and using shrugging gestures. We also
found out that in Middle-Eastern cultures the same gesturing tends to be interpreted in
an opposite way: as a sign of a confident and certain interlocutor. Because this kind of
behaviour may also imply arrogance, the gesture can also be considered socially
inacceptable and impolite. As a result, we concluded that the underlying interpretation
concerning shoulder shrugging may be related to “lack of knowledge” which can then
be further analysed in terms of “lack of ability to continue” and “lack of willingness
to continue”, and that different cultures then may focus more on the uncertainty
interpretation while the others focus more on the confidence interpretation.
However, in order to draw statistical conclusions of intercultural communication
strategies and to make generalizations about hesitation related expressions, especially
shoulder shrugging, in wider cultural contexts, it is important to collect more data on
the hesitation expressions in different cultures, and also more examples of shoulder
shrugging itself. We can then use a similar kind of methodology as applied in the
current work, to collect information about the appropriate interpretations of these
expressions. Interviews of people with different cultural background would allow us
to collect data on the participants' subjective views and interpretations of the selected
video examples, while a word test -type questionnaire would provide us with more
objective information about non-verbal signals and their functions in communication.
This way we can study how hesitation, uncertainty, doubt, and lack of knowledge are
expressed in different cultures, and also how particular expressions, such as shoulder
shrugs, are interpreted in different cultural contexts.
We can also include activity analysis into the study and observations of uncertainty
in various types of social activities, and consequently, obtain further insights about
different manifestations of hesitation related phenomena. The roles of the
interlocutors in different activities support different behaviour patterns and thus also
differences in the acceptable ways of expressing one's hesitation and ignorance. For
instance, communication strategies used when talking to one's superior or a colleague
or when chatting with a familiar or an unfamiliar partner, are likely to differ from
each other concerning the type and frequency of expressions, the use of gesturing and
body movements, and tolerance of silence. Moreover, the five dimensions of [5], i.e.
hierarchy, individualism, gender, uncertainty, and orientation, can also be associated
