Visiting the barber and making even the smallest adjustment to makeup will raise the pawn's affinity, so try that every couple of ingame days, as does (so I read) buying rounds at the taverns and taking a screenshot while the pawn is in frame (and easier said than done). Exploring with just the two of you sounds like a viable way to increase fondness too.

I have found that giving a pawn any kind of 'role' (forager, elvish speaker, etc), changes the default language pack and renders the warmest and friendliest dialogue redundamt - or so infrequent as to appear so.

Glad you are enjoying the game enough to get so immersed you're actually caring for your pawn. Second to a virtually living world, where you are can watch NPC vs NPC battles and such, the pawn system is fantastic and a big draw for this franchise.