Here's Tyler Cowen wondering which habits of talking are good for your intellectual health and development.
Taking his last question first: what's already written about this? Tyler's insinuation here is too pessimistic. I'd turn to:
Let's start with the Callardian Socrates. See, e.g., here, here, and here (and I expect her forthcoming book to be excellent), but also go read the dialogues! That picture of communication and intellectual development has these lessons:
Sarcasm, litotes, and cheap humor are enemies of intellectual development. In Socratic terms, they are all ways of dodging a question.
Don't translate something (a question or an assertion) into other terms unless (i) you're simply correcting a mistake or (ii) you can give some concrete intellectual benefit to that translation. Some very smart people with favorite theories too often start by translating a subject into the terms of that theory.
The same goes for abstractions and generalizations.
Pauses (of a couple seconds) are underrated. They give the other person a chance to finish and yourself a chance to overcome an initial surge of emotion. But pauses longer than this can indicate (and over time cause) an unwillingness to locate exactly what is confusing or troubling you.
Saying precisely what you mean, and resist the urge to qualify it or substitute a cliché or meme, is healthy and rare. Ironically, this one of the best ways to cultivate weirdness.
Include quantitative estimates. If, say, the population of France is relevant, say what you think it is. Perhaps you don't know, but being clear about your (implicit) assumptions is better than hiding them. And if you can't get within an order of magnitude, what does this say about what you're saying? Over time this encourages quantitative accuracy and, more generally, learning about the world.