Conlangs tend to neglect sociolinguistics, and I wanna change that, so I'm going to give you a very simple #worldbuilding question that I imagine will have some incredibly deep answers: in your setting, how long is an awkward silence?

The obvious answer is "it depends", but bear with me. The answer is often cultural, because we create norms around speech, particularly when we're speaking to each other, and those norms vary wildly from place to place.

There's not even a single metric for English. New Zealand English (NZE) has a 'zero gap' – you're expected to begin speaking as soon as the other person finishes and ANY silence is awkward. In some Pacific Islands the gap can be up 30 seconds and speaking too early is rude.

There are also some languages (it's been like 10 years so bear with me if I'm remembering wrong, but I think it was an Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn) who have a NEGATIVE gap: you're expected to start speaking before the other person has finished.

Obviously it's hard to represent with prose, but the amount of description between utterances can help replicate a gap and I've noticed it's often fairly standard and it feels like the standard 2–3 seconds you get in most English dialects.

And like ... you can play with that. You can bulk out descriptions (and play with their content) to replicate longer pauses and you can weave mood, concensus or tension out of an extra second of silence.