There's this thing in linguistics, casual language requires backchanneling - to respond back with either short utterances that show you understand, or to show confusion and then ask for clarity

The reason formal language is formalised, as in the shit used in essays, is that there is no easy way to say "what did you mean?" - the feedback loop is far too slow for that process and by the point the author(s) get to respond they likely forget what they meant as well

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This makes so much sense, my most painful experience in understanding department is from forums where feedback is at best hours long, and infinitely long at worst if the person never ever replies

[–] gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Honestly, you might enjoy the PopSci book "Because, Internet", it's by a linguist that studies neologisms as her main focus, focusing specifically on the growth of casual informal language that has only been made possible by The Internet