iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Theresa Heyd @theresaheyd.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Endlich wieder cringe! Am 9. April bin ich mit einem Vortrag zu Gast bei den Kolleg*innen an der @unibern.bsky.social: Oddly Satisfying: The Sociolinguistics of Ambivalent Affect

Flyer mit Vortragsankünding:
Oddly Satisfying:
The Sociolinguistics of Ambivalent Affect

If awkwardness has emerged as an important cultural category in recent years, 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. Here, cringe is an ambivalent
affect of awkwardness that is uncomfortable yet enjoyable and consumable. In this talk, I
want to discuss a number of digital practices and phenomena that encapsulate ambivalent
affect in their vernacular names: epic fails, oddly satisfying videos, hate-reading and hatewatching,
and guilty pleasures. I will argue that the ambivalent affect expressed in these
digital practices is a constitutive element of their popularity. Along with others, these kinds
of practices can be understood as affective genres. In my conclusion, I will connect this
interpretation of ambivalent affect in digital linguistics to ongoing debates about
incorporating notions of vernacular aesthetics into our sociolinguistic reasoning.
Theresa Heyd is Chair Professor of English Linguistics at Heidelberg. Together with her colleague Heide
Volkening (Institut für Deutsche Philologie), she is currently leading an interdisciplinary project Cringe:
Aesthetics and Discursive Practice of Schamlust funded by the Volkswagen Stiftung.

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Theresa Heyd @theresaheyd.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

Worüber ich unter anderem sprechen werde: die Konjunktur kultureller Theorien der Awkwardness (z.B. Plakias 2024, Berkers & Wijngaarden 2025),

Buchtitel pink auf blau: plakias, Awkwardness, A Theory

Buchtitel A Sociologiy of Awkwardness, Routledge in rot

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Theresa Heyd @theresaheyd.bsky.social · 20/02/2025

die sensorische Soziolinguistik der Oddly Satisfying-Ästhetik (mit Schleim!),

YouTube Thumbnail von Oddly Satisfying Schleimvideos

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