Word Up!

There was an advertisement that said, ‘Bus adverts work, you are reading this aren’t you?’. Of course it could have said ‘Newspaper adverts work, you are reading this aren’t you?’ But if the newspaper advert was on the side of a bus, or the bus advert in a newspaper, it would be very odd. But that's language, rather odd.
We get that a single word can be a proxy for a something. Such as a Table, or someone called Simon etc. Of course, what style of table, and which/who Simon is, ain't straightforward. But when we start to make sentences, things get even more complicated, and very quickly. Whilst largely formatted in a certain way, language has to infer things understood by the reader/listener, spatially, in time, sometimes with intent or query or command or jest or with implied empathy, or anger etc. Perhaps most importantly, and as a challenge to the philosophical tradition of internal thought, language isn't created internally. It only has meaning socially. And with words marking thought, I think therefore I am is actually rubbish. It should be 'I engage with other humans, creating meaning and the ability to explain my own position in the world'.
The simple sound of a spoken word or the lines and curves making up the written or printed word mean nothing without social context.
Words and their combined meaning seem, therefore, to sit between pure symbol and lived perception. That tension seems at the heart of a problem: language appears both radically un-determined and yet uncannily effective at organising reality.
It may be that meaning doesn't reside in language at all, but in the interplay between linguistic forms and minds already embedded in a world. Taking this view, words don’t so much contain meaning as act as prompts or constraints that draw on prior bodily experience, social practice, and a shared orientation toward things. Language could be less a self‑sufficient system and more a surface phenomenon, riding on deeper, pre‑linguistic structures of engagement created for and by organic life for evolutionary purposes.
That perspective complicates the idea that AI, as a language‑based intelligence, could straightforwardly capture the “essence of life” through linguistic competence alone. At the recent PIPs session on AI, this was considered. AI has some scientific greats like Dawkin claiming it is as good as conscious. But surely, even if a super fast language based computer system can process patterns of use, reference, and inference, it remains an open question whether such mastery amounts to understanding, or whether it is closer to a sophisticated echo of human sense‑making?
At the same time, the success of language models does force us to reconsider how much of what we call intelligence is scaffolded by linguistic structure itself. Does language create meaning by honing articulation alone?

Perhaps meaning is neither language based nor social and organic, but emerges in the space between symbol, practice, and form of life — a space we are only beginning to map.
If so, words are not mirrors of reality nor arbitrary games, but tools through which different kinds of beings (or if you like, material systems generating ‘thought’) create, and/or carve out, intelligibility through their encounter with the world.

Part one. What exactly are words and language?
Is it a tool to describe how we live, love, make decisions, laugh, hate, plan, understand etc etc. Or has it a 'stand alone' power to create meaning in its own right, independently of collective, social use?

Part two. What limitations, and opportunities does language have for humans, for other animals, for AI and (thought experiment opportunity) for aliens?

Oxford Philosophy in Pubs is community philosophy.
It is part of a national movement to encourage people to think about some of the 'big ideas' in life. No expertise necessary, only the desire to do what Wittgenstein described as 'untangling the knots in the way we think about things'.
It is a collective activity, not a debating club.
Everyone attending, and there is often a wide range of people present, is encouraged to listen to and engage with the topic. We hope it is fun and provides plenty of food for thought.
The organisers are trying to find ways to collect money from attendees towards the costs of running the sessions, mostly the costs of using this Meetup site. One of the organisers has something on their phone that can take payments. Suggested amount? Just a few quid now and again for regulars. For anyone turning up for the first time, it's free.