Language Journal 64 to 68 (WC: 625)

When I began dating my current boyfriend, he constantly talked about speech and debate tournaments in from high school. Now, evidently, this is a north-eastern Ohio trend because in Cincinnati speech and debate competitions are invisible. So then meeting his friends, who were also “locker-talkers” in high school every time they began talking about their speech days I would begin to zone out because I didn’t have a clue what they were talking about. Little did I know, speech and debate had its own jargon. 

Speech and Debate Term	What is it?
Cut/ Cutting	A speech performed, but is nicknamed a cut because the performance is cut line by line from a full work of a movie script
Big	Those few tournaments where a speech team competes for awards those are bigger than regional but not as big as states. Awards are seen to be a better accomplishment and honor.
Little	A tournament competing with other district schools in the area.
Hardware	Any trophy or award won at a tournament.
Original Oratory/ Original	The name of a team member and group of speeches in which the performer writes then performs their own speeches.
Duo Interpretation/ Duo	The name of a team of two people doing one cut together, where they cannot look at or touch each other in their performance. These can be either humorous or dramatic in content.
Dramatic Interpretation/ Drama	The name of a team member and a group of speeches in which the competitor uses different voices and facial expressions for each character of their cut. These usually have more of a somber tone.
Humor Interpretation/Humor	The name of a team member and group of speeches in which the performance is comedic in content.
United States and International Extemporaneous/ EXEMP	One person will give a speech written by themselves in a 30 minute time period based on a single quote about a United States’ current event or international current event
Lincoln-Douglas Debate/ L.D.	One person debate on one predetermined topic with another person and then they are randomly assigned the pro or con argument.
Public Forum Debate/ PF	This is a debate where two debaters on the same team face off against another team of two in front of a judge.
Blocking	This is more related to duos, where movements must be planned within the speech.
Posting	This is the announcements of the order of rounds throughout the tournament.
Locker Talkers	This is a nickname speech students a gladly picked up for themselves. When preparing for a tournament, they are always in a school and they stand in the halls and practice. To those who do not know that they are warming up for a speech they simply look like they are talking to the lockers.
Warm Bodies	Competitors in any event simply put into a round but they perform nothing and do nothing. They are used to fill space. This is a tactic used by coaches to up the potential place of their other competitors in the same event.
Prose and Poetry/ Prose	This is the only event where the competitor has the script in front of them.  Half of the time they read straight from the script and the other half is memorize.
Drops	Those competitors who do not show up for a round.
Rig	A way a competitor or school cheats in a final round. They pack as many people from their school into the audience, making to speech more enjoyable to the judges.
Black Ball	This is a mark given to bad judges. This “bad” is in the opinion of the speakers, where the judges have take away points for illegitimate reasons.  The mark keeps that judge from being able to judge at the district level or above.