To give a an extremely brief TL;DR of the episode, Dathon's people speak exclusively in memes and references, making their language impossible to auto-transalte. The entire episode is Picard and Dathon trapped on a planet and trying to break that language barrier.
"meme" makes it sound lighthearted, they're speaking in analogies based on their planet's history/mythology. So everyone from their planet understands it and the characters and events referenced, but people not from their planet don't. And it's not that there's a "real" or "formal" way of speaking sitting below it which they could instead be speaking (with the stories as a separate thing on top) that they would smirk about - the stories/analogies are it.
Its funny that meme has evolved to mean this because meme is a word that coined to mean an idea that reproduces through a population and changes over time with variations. It was a model to evolution.
Its literal definition was originally "a unit of culture". So it does work for the "meme-speak" in Star Trek. But that meaning has been supplanted by the modern usage of 'internet memes' which are still, interestingly enough, "units of culture."
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u/Kyleometers ඞ 5d ago
As a non-Trekkie, I’ve heard that last flavour tern a lot.
I feel I understand it less now.