Awkwardness: A Theory

To understand the norm as normative is part of what it is to be a member of the group; the collective is constituted, in part, by an agreement to regard one another as accountable, and to hold one another accountable, to (among other things) obeying those same norms

Anxiety is prospective: it anticipates “threats and challenges that are unpredictable, uncontrollable, and uncertain in nature” (Kurth 2018: 33). Awkwardness is occurrent: when we feel awkward, it’s because the awkwardness is happening right now.

We depend on others to receive our expressions and grant them meaning. This leaves us vulnerable to misinterpretation.

We tend to focus on norm violations, but the absence of normative guidance can have just as significant an impact on our social lives.

Rather than thinking of owning awkwardness as something we do as individuals, we might think of it as a way of collectively redistributing social capital. Awkward moments are an opportunity for social inclusion, a way to acknowledge the difficulty surrounding certain topics and share the burden of navigating them. Owning awkwardness is one way to d

reducing awkwardness needn’t require changing expressive styles; it might be enough to broaden our interpretive resources.

As issues are moralized, the scripts governing how we negotiate them likewise shift, and we can be caught off-guard, or uncertain about the norms that apply, during the transition. There’s room here for both genuine ambiguity, issues that are not determinately moral or personal, or that occupy both spheres, and epistemic uncertainty, where there ma

One way anxiety and awkwardness relate is via “social anxiety”: anxiety about the prospect of awkwardness. We anticipate it; we dread it; we do what we can to avoid it.

The rules of etiquette reduce the cognitive burden of everyday life; because of them, in social situations, “the work of deciding what to do happens elsewhere”