... aligning himself with ‘the people’ while distancing himself from other politicians, presenting himself as a strong and competent leader, mocking his opponents, and appraising current states of affairs as bad.

The study shows that Trump shrugs in the multimodal performance of several discursive moves associated with right-wing populism, including ...

The most frequent function is common ground/obviousness where Trump shrugs to signal intersubjective alignment between him and his audience, both in terms of shared knowledge and shared values:

“We love New York values, do we agree? We love New York values”

In the affective domain Trump shrugs to express affective distance (‘I don’t like’) and indifference (‘I don’t care’).

Functionally, shrugs are used in the multimodal expression of stance in two domains: epistemic and affective. In the epistemic domain, Trump shrugs to express common ground/obviousness (‘everybody knows’) and epistemic distance (‘I don’t know’).

Trump is shown to use expansive shrugs (Horizontal Outside) more frequently than contracting shrugs with a lateral extended shrug making maximal use of the gesture space and exhibiting a kind of showmanship normally associated with live entertainment rather than politics.

Shrugs vary in terms of arm orientation (horizontal vs. vertical) and hand position relative to shoulder width (inside vs. outside), as well as extension (extended vs. flexed).

Drawing on gesture studies in cognitive linguistics, we offer a detailed description of the different forms that Trump’s shrug gestures take and the functions that such gestures perform in the context of right-wing populism.

We argue that shrug gestures are one way that Trump’s performance transgresses the normative bodily standards of political discourse and that they contribute to the kind of ‘corporeal presence’ typically observed of right-wing populist politicians.

Starting from the view of right-wing populism as both an ideology and a communicative style, we analyse the discursive performance of Donald Trump in the live setting of campaign rallies, focussing on his use of shrug gestures.

When I sit in such meetings I always wonder why am I short of attention?