Recently, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dropped the term ‘Essex girl,’ stating the term was ‘no longer widely used’ and ‘not helpful to current learners.’ This recent episode politicised lexicography and questioned the purpose of dictionaries. What power do dictionaries wield? How does language impact our behaviour and opinions towards people?

What is interesting in the case of lexicography is that most lexicographers often defend their annual or monthly dictionary inclusions of ‘new’ words as an attempt to account for how language is used, rather than exercising an authority as to declare certain words/phrases as ‘real’. Take, for example, the editor-at-large at Merriam-Webster, Peter Sokolowski who once said: ‘Our mission has always been to tell the truth about words, and for most of our history that means presenting definitions made by careful research into how the language is actually used.’ 

Furthermore, Dictionary.com social media manager Lauren Silter once referred to the duty of dictionaries to bring ‘language into a more approachable and relevant light’ by using its ‘authority on the English language.’ Clearly, dictionaries have the power to legitimate and validate certain words and phrases as ‘real,’ but ultimately this is not the main purpose of the dictionary.

We might say then that dictionaries have a responsibility to show how language is being used, rather than a responsibility to define what it actually means. The example of the ‘Essex girl’ is an interesting one in showing the material consequences felt by the authority of the dictionary. We can see that when language is endowed with authority through its admission into the dictionary, there are real and tangible ramifications. The OED  were pressured by the Essex Girls’ Liberation Front; an activist group fighting for cultural rehabilitation for Essex women after years of discrimination caused by the phrase. The very fact that the group targeted the OED to enact change highlights that the removal of the term from the dictionary could help the cause of Essex women.

This wasn’t the first time that activist groups have targeted the dictionaries. In 2020, there were calls for the word ‘yid/do’ to be removed from dictionaries for its derogatory implications on the Jewish community. Long before 2020, when the word ‘ain’t’ was removed from the Merriam-Webster’s Third International Dictionary in the 1960s, the reactions were so vociferous that a hostile attempt to take over the dictionary was attempted. 

However, the stereotype of the ‘Essex girl’ was not solely enforced by the term’s place in the dictionary. The connotations of the ‘Essex girl’ being ‘variously characterised as unintelligent, promiscuous and materialistic’, was a result of sitcoms dating back to the 1980s.  Essex women have been subject to satire, mockery and straight-out discrimination over the years in newspaper headlines, Oxbridge interviews, political rhetoric and is even experienced when travelling abroad. The stigma towards Essex women was (and is) a result of pop culture. Before the explosion of pop culture, Essex was a place which offered hope to working-class Londoners. Places like Basildon and Harlow were built to meet housing and sanitation needs among other civic needs following World War Two, yet we now know Essex for providing contestants on Towie, Britain’s Got Talent, Love Island and Big Brother.

Television plays a considerable role in how we think about certain groups and areas in the UK. This is especially the case considering the role television plays in our upbringing; it seems the stereotypes from Big Brother, Britain’s Got Talent, Love Island, X Factor, Little Britain or even The Inbetweeners are inescapable in British culture. It’s because of this – this ubiquity of television in our upbringing in Britain and how this has informed quintessential Britishness – that the ‘Essex girl’ stereotype surely will not go away overnight. The fact that the term has been removed from the OED will still be relatively unknown by the masses in the UK. What prevails however, are the stereotypes, actions and idiosyncrasies of Essex women  that have already been imprinted in British popular culture and collective thought.

To come back once more to the quote provided by Peter Sokolowski: dictionaries aim to ‘research into how the language is actually used,’ not define the language itself. In the case of the ‘Essex girl,’ the dictionary was tabulating how people thought of Essex women because of their portrayals in sitcoms and reality-TV shows. So although the dictionary has the power to ‘label’ the ‘Essex girl’ as a fixed, ‘real’ phrase, conceptions of Essex women had already been ingrained into Britons from the 1980s. The removal of the phrase from the dictionary is important; it shows that the phrase is not so widespread, at least according to the OED. But this renaissance, as such, of Essex women and Essex very generally is one that will take time to reverse because of the deeply-entrenched ideas about them in the form of television. 

We might think that some of our ideas of reality – at least about people and regions – are first ingrained through the TV screen and ‘validated’ by the dictionary. Strangely, though it seems the latter is being emphasised over the former. But what about the next generation? They’ll be consuming the same very shows which created this predicament for Essex in the first place; Love Island, Britain’s Got Talent, Big Brother and Towie will continue to admit applicants from Essex. Maybe the next target for Essex Girls’ Liberation Front should be these very shows; and perhaps this could make the inevitable long and arduous process of cultural renewal and reparations a bit quicker.

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