Formal And Informal Language

The association of formal language with deeper intellectual communication or greater intelligence is a red herring and a non sequitur all at once, a betrayal of reason that ignores the true nature of language.  Words of both a formal and informal kind have their communicative usefulness at times, even if the most effective category of language is often right between these two ends of the spectrum, but it is rather easy to sway people by bringing about the illusion of intelligence through speech rather than just understanding truths and concepts without errors.  For this reason, formal wording is something many people confuse for a sign of true intelligence, when someone using formal language might be intentionally trying to hide their illogical beliefs with sophisticated words or might be saying things randomly--without premeditated comprehension.

Formal language is only used for at least one of three reasons: a person wants to fit into a group that uses it or please someone else who uses more sophisticated language, wants to sound more intelligent just for their choice of words instead of their conceptual understanding and philosophical beliefs, or simply wants to use it because it linguistically reflects their actual thoughts in a natural way.  Of these reasons to use formal language, only the last is a valid one.  The other two reek of superficiality and fallacious, erroneous beliefs.  In fact, a genuinely intelligent person would see right through this tactic even if they had not thought much about the nature of intelligence and language before.

In the case of the first motivation, one must treat someone else who almost certainly mistakes formal language for intelligence or deep comprehension as if they are worth pleasing and as if their asinine stance has any veracity or significance.  In the case of the second motivation, one must hold to a false idea about intelligence regardless of whether someone else does.  The point is not necessarily about trying to impress a specific group that likewise uses formal language for shallow reasons, but it might be about coming across as more intelligent to random people who are irrational enough to conflate vocabulary with comprehension and ideological soundness.

Both informal and formal language can have their uses, but none of them ever amount to anything more than conveying concepts and truths.  The sole primary purpose of language, after all, is mere communication; language does not ground one's understanding of a concept and is not necessary to think of or about many ideas.  Because of this, any change in the formality or informality of the words a person uses do not reflect changes in the concepts, just differences in how those ideas are supposed to be conveyed.  It would be quite lazy and shallow of someone to truly believe that using arbitrarily more formal words means they are more rational, which is all that intelligence entails.