Theresa Heyd – Cringe: the sociolinguistics of digital affects
When: 2025-03-31 16:00-18:00 (Tallinn time)
Where: A108 & online
The event is public via zoom:
https://zoom.us/j/94629959885?pwd=2NktNsXm0SzbzwwmfGbqlk5UZQoARw.1
Meeting ID: 946 2995 9885 Passcode: 007238
Speaker
Theresa Heyd
Universität Heidelberg
Lecture title
Cringe: the sociolinguistics of digital affects
Abstract:
If awkwardness has emerged as an important cultural category in recent years (Plakias 2024, Berkers and Wijngaarden 2025), then cringe is its popular linguistic formulation. Cringe is a core element of digital linguistic practice, used in metadiscursive framing, as a genre label in Try Not To Cringe compilations, and as a multimodal, embodied item in reaction pics and memes. In line with others, we have described cringe as an ambivalent affect of awkwardness that is uncomfortable, yet enjoyable and consumable (Heyd and Volkening 2025). The ambivalence of affective cringe practices seems to be particularly useful for doing sociolinguistic boundary work: diagnoses of cringe bring forth communities of taste, and the discursive work of distinction done around cringe very often plays out along lines of gender, class and age. This talk presents cringe as part of the growing field of the sociolinguistics of digital affect. It discusses affective practice as an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, and explores it through the analysis of digital practices, including selfies and embodied cringe reactions. As an outlook, it connects to wider digital practices of ambivalent affect, such as Oddly Satisfying videos.
References:
Berkers, P., & Wijngaarden, Y. (2025). A Sociology of Awkwardness: On Social Interactions Going Wrong. Routledge.
Heyd, T. & Volkening, H. (2025). #cringe. Geschichte der Gegenwart. https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/cringe/
Plakias, A. (2024). Awkwardness: A Theory. Oxford University Press.
