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Accent

Accent refers to a particular way of talking and pronouncing words, and is associated with a geographical area or social class. It can be easy to tell where a person is from if they have a strong and recognisable regional accent. Upper-class characters often talk in received pronunciation (RP).

Emphasis

Emphasis is where a performer will stress a particular word or phrase within a sentence to indicate importance. To stress a word, they may increase their volume or use intonation to draw attention to it.

Emphasis can be placed on any word within a line, and can completely change the meaning of what is being said. By emphasising different words in bold in the line below, the meaning of the line will change:

• I didn't lose your keys - somebody else lost them
• I didn't lose your keys - I absolutely did not lose them
• I didn't lose your keys - I did something else with them
• I didn't lose your keys - the keys didn’t belong to you
• I didn't lose your keys - I lost something else

The same will work for any sentence.

Pace and rhythm

Pace is the speed at which lines are delivered. The speed of speech can often convey how someone is feeling. For example, a person who is tired may speak slowly, whereas an excited character may talk quickly. Sometimes a performer might speed up or slow down throughout a line to show their thoughts are changing.

Rhythm is related to pace, and refers to the pattern of sound when speaking. A performer may speak with a staccato, erratic rhythm, where words are spoken abruptly with a broken flow. This could be used to create the effect of nervousness.

Pause

A pause (or beat) is a short break in speech for dramatic effect. Sometimes pauses are written into a script where the playwright requires the performer to take a rest, and they might even be expressed by an ellipsis in the text. At other times, the performer may choose to pause to show hesitation, that they are overwhelmed with emotion, or that they are thinking.