Literary Terms and Definitions S

Literary Terms and Definitions: S

This page is under perpetual construction! It was last updated April 14, 2008.

This list is meant to assist, not intimidate. Use it as a touchstone for important concepts and vocabulary that we will cover during the term. Vocabulary terms are listed alphabetically.

[A] [B] [C] [D] [E] [F] [G] [H] [I] [J] [K] [L] [M]

[N] [O] [P] [Q] [R] [S] [T] [U] [V] [W] [X] [Y] [Z]

SAGA: The word comes from the Old Norse term for a "saw" or a "saying." Sagas are Scandinavian and Icelandic prose narratives about famous historical heroes, notable families, or the exploits of kings and warriors. Until the 12th century, most sagas were folklore, and they passed from person to person by oral transmission. Thereafter, scribes wrote them down. The Icelandic sagas take place when Iceland was first settled by Vikings (930-1030 AD). Examples include Grettir's Saga, Njál's Saga, Egil's Saga, and the Saga of Eric the Red. The saga is marked by literary and social conventions including warriors who stop in the midst of combat to recite extemporaneous poetry, individuals wearing dark blue cloaks when they are about to kill someone, elaborate genealogies and "back-story" before the main plot, casual violence, and recitations of the names and features of magical swords and weapons. Later sagas show signs of being influenced by continental literature--particularly French tales of chivalry and knighthood. For modern readers, the appearance of these traits often seems to sit uneasily with the surrounding material. In common usage, the term saga has been erroneously applied to any exciting, long narrative. See cycle and epic.

SAINT: See discussion under vita.

SAINT'S LIFE: Another term for the medieval genre called a vita. See discussion under vita.

SALIC LAW: French law stating that the right of a king's son to inherit the French throne passes only patrilineally rather than matrilineally. In England, however, the English Queen Consort (a queen married to a ruling husband) can become the Queen Regnant (a queen ruling in her own right) if her husband dies and there are no other male relatives in line to inherit the throne. Likewise, in French Salic Law, if the queen remarries after the king dies, any children she has from the new husband cannot claim the throne. Likewise, if a male king dies without heirs, only his brothers and their male offspring can claim the throne. This right does not pass to male children of the queen that she might have later. However, under English law, a male descended from the English Queen can ascend to the throne. The differences between Salic and English Law regarding inheritance play a key part in Shakespeare's Henry V, in which King Henry must determine whether he can justly claim the throne of France.

SAMOYEDIC: A non-Indo-European branch of Uralic languages spoken in northern Siberia.

SAPPHIC METER:Typically, this meter is found in quatrains in which the first three lines consist of eleven syllables and the fourth line contains five. The metrical pattern is as follows in the first three lines: (foot #1) / u (foot #2) / x (foot #3) / u u (foot #4) / u (and foot #5) / x. The "x" in each case indicates a syllaba anceps--a syllable that may be either heavily or lightly stressed. In the last line, the pattern is (foot #1) / u u and (foot #2) / /.

The pattern is notoriously difficult in English, but more common in Greek. The term Sapphic comes from the name of the female Greek poet Sappho.

SAPPHIC ODE: Virtually identical with a Horatian ode, a Sapphic ode consists of quatrains in which the first three lines consist of eleven syllables and the fourth line contains five. The metrical pattern is described under Sapphic meter.

SAPPHICS: Verses written in Sapphic meter.

SAPPHIC VERSE: Verse written in Sapphic meter.

SARCASM: Another term for verbal irony--the act of ostensibly saying one thing but meaning another. See further discussion under irony.

SATEM LANGUAGE: One of the two main branches of Indo-European languages. These languages are generally associated with eastern Indo-European languages and they often have a sibilant sound rather than the palatal /k/ found in equivalent centum words. Click here for more information.

SATIRE: An attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor, or a critique of what the author sees as dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards. Satire became an especially popular technique used during the Enlightenment, in which it was believed that an artist could correct folly by using art as a mirror to reflect society. When people viewed the satire and saw their faults magnified in a distorted reflection, they could see how ridiculous their behavior was and then correct that tendency in themselves. The tradition of satire continues today. Popular cartoons such as The Simpsons and televised comedies like The Daily Show make use of it in modern media. Conventionally, formal satire involves a direct, first-person-address, either to the audience or to a listener mentioned within the work. An example of formal satire is Alexander Pope's Moral Essays. Indirect satire conventionally employs the form of a fictional narrative--such as Byron's Don Juan or Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Ridicule, irony, exaggeration, and similar tools are almost always used in satire. Horatian satire tends to focus lightly on laughter and ridicule, but it maintain a playful tone. Generally, the tone is sympathetic and good humored, somewhat tolerant of imperfection and folly even while expressing amusement at it. The name comes from the Roman poet Horace (65-8 BCE), who preferred to ridicule human folly in general rather than condemn specific persons. In contrast, Juvenalian satire also uses withering invective, insults, and a slashing attack. The name comes from the Roman poet Juvenal (60-140 CE), who frequently employed the device, but the label is applied to British writers such as Swift and Pope as well. Compare with medieval estates satire and spoof.

SATIRIC COMEDY: Any drama or comic poem involving humor as a means of satire.

SATYR PLAY: A burlesque play submitted by Athenian playwrights along with their tragic trilogies. On each day of the Dionysia, one tragedy was performed, followed by one satyr play.

SCANSION: The act of "scanning" a poem to determine its meter. To perform scansion, the student breaks down each line into individual metrical feet and determines which syllables have heavy stress and which have lighter stress. According to the early conventions of English poetry, each foot should have at least one stressed syllable, though feet with all unstressed syllables are found occasionally in Greek and other poetic traditions.

SCATOLOGY: Not to be confused with eschatology, scatology refers to so-called "potty-humor"--jokes or stories dealing with feces designed to elicit either laughter or disgust. Anthropologists have noted that scatological humor occurs in nearly every human culture. In some cultures and time periods, scatology is treated as vulgar or low-brow (for instance, the Victorian period in England). At other times, scatological elements appear in stories that are not necessarily meant to be low-brow. For instance, many serious medieval legends of demons link them to excrement, and the audience of French fabliaux appear to be noblemen and aristocrats rather than bourgeois rabble. Scatology also appears in medieval plays such as Mankind and in works associated various French fabliaux (singular fabliau). Chaucer relies heavily on scatological humor in "The Summoner's Tale." See fabliau.

SCHEMA ATTICUM: This popular grammatical construction appears in ancient Attic Greek (and it is later mimicked in New Testament Greek). It is a specific type of enallage in which a neuter plural subject takes a singular verb (Smith 9). Normally, this construction would be considered a grammatical error in Greek, but if poets, playwrights, or prophets do it intentionally, it becomes high art. The device leads to some interesting translation decisions in modern English editions of the Bible or Greek literature. Should the translator "normalize" the grammar so it doesn't look odd to English students? Or should the translator bravely insert his own English grammatical "error" to match the intentional "error" in the original Greek text? See schema pindarikon, below.

SCHEMA PINDARIKON: This popular grammatical construction appears in the ancient Attic Greek of Pindar and later in New Testament Greek. It is a type of enallage in which any compound subject takes a singular verb (Smith 9). Normally, that would be considered a grammatical error, but if the poet Pindar does it, it is high art. This general term contrasts with the more specific schema atticum, above.

SCENE: A dramatic sequence that takes place within a single locale (or setting) on stage. Often scenes serve as the subdivision of an act within a play. Note that when we use the word scene generically or in the text of a paper (for example, "there are three scenes in the play"), we do not capitalize the word. See The MLA Handbook, 6th edition, section 3.6.5 for further information involving capitalization of scenes.

SCEOP (also spelled scop): An Anglo-Saxon singer or musician who would perform in a mead hall. Cf. bard.

SCENERY: The visual environment created onstage using a backdrop and props. The purpose of scenery is either to suggest vaguely a specific setting or produce the illusion of actually watching events in that specific setting.

SCHISM: A schism is a split or division in the church concerning religious belief or organizational structure--one in which a single church splits into two or more separate denominations--often hostile to each other. Click here for more information.

SCHOLASTICISM: In medieval universities, scholasticism was the philosophy in which all branches of educaton iwere developed and ordered by theological principles or schemata.

SCHOOL: While common parlance uses the word school to refer to a specific institute of learning, literary scholars use this term to refer to groups of writers or poets who share similar styles, literary techniques, or social concerns regardless of their educational backgrounds. In some rare cases, the group's members recognize that they share these concerns while they are alive, and they purposely name themselves or their movement to reflect their characteristics. For instance, the American Beat poets, the French Imagists, and the English Pre-Raphaelites recognized and named themselves as being part of their respective movements. It is far more common, however, for later generations of scholars and critics to look back and lump groups of artists or thinkers into specific schools. For instance, the Romantic poets, the Spenserians, the Cavalier poets, the Metaphysical poets, and the Gothic novelists are specific schools of literature, but these labels did not appear for the particular groups until years after the writers lived. Art historians make similar distinctions about the Bauhaus school, the Expressionist movement, the Fauves, the Cubists, and so on. Shared intellectual or philosophical tendencies mark schools of philosophy as well--such as the Epicureans, the Stoics, the Skeptics, the Sophists, the Platonists, and the Neo-platonists--and these terms are often applied in a general way to writers who existed in later centuries. Accordingly, we might speak of both Marcus Aurelius and Hemingway as part of the Stoic school, even though the two lived two thousand years apart from each other on different continents, and one was a meditative Roman Emperor who outlawed gladiatorial combat and the other an American ambulance driver obsessed with machisimo and bull-fighting. Keep in mind, divisions into such artificial schools of thought are often arbitrary, contradictory, and murky. They work best at pointing out general similarities rather than creating sharp, clear categorical labels.

SCHWA: The mid-central vowel or the phonetic symbol for it. This phonetic symbol is typically an upside down e. The schwa vowel appears in words like putt and sofa and duh. The same sound appears blended with an /r/ in words like pert, shirt, and motor. See also intrusive schwa.

SCIENCE FICTION (originally "scientifiction," a neologism coined by editor Hugo Gernsback in his pulp magazine Amazing Stories): Literature in which speculative technology, time travel, alien races, intelligent robots, gene-engineering, space travel, experimental medicine, psionic abilities, dimensional portals, or altered scientific principles contribute to the plot or background. Many purists make a distinction between "hard" science fiction (in which the story attempts to follow accepted scientific realism and extrapolates the outcomes or consequences of scientific discovery in a hard-headed manner) and "soft" science fiction (which often involves looser adherence to scientific knowledge and more fantasy-elements). The basic premise is usually built on a "what if" scenario--i.e., it explores what might occur if a certain technology or event occurred. Examples include Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey, Robert Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land, Isaac Asimov's Foundation, Octavia Butler's Dawn, H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man, Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, and William Gibson's Neuromancer. See also space opera, speculative fiction, and Cthulhu mythos.

SCOP (pronounced like "shop"): See sceop.

SCRIBAL CORRUPTION: A general term referring to errors in a text made by later scribes rather than the original authors. In many cases, these mistakes are obviously the result of human error while copying, such as accidentally repeating or leaving out a word or line(s) from the original manuscript. "Eye skips," for instance, are errors that result when a scribe's eye drops from the original word or line he was copying to a different word or line that begins with the same letter or word, causing him to leave out the intermediary material. Other scribal errors come about when a scribe attempts to "correct" or "simplify" a text he doesn't understand well. One of the more amusing examples of scribal corruption comes from the Anglo-Saxon monks of medieval Britain. There, a monk was copying a text that referred to heaven as the "Isle of Joy." The word joy in Anglo-Saxon was gliw. (It's the word that gives us the modern word glee.) Unfortunately, an Anglo-Saxon monk misread the final letter. This final letter was wynn--an Anglo-Saxon letter that looks sort of like the modern letter p, but which represents a /w/ sound. You can see samples of the letters by clicking here. The scribe mistakenly thought he was viewing the letter thorn, which represents a -th sound. Thus, he miswrote the word as Glith in an Anglo-Saxon educational poem called "Adrian and Ritheus." The error had its consequences. Hundreds of this scribe's newly Christianized and newly literate students therefore diligently learned that heaven was located on "The Isle of Glith." This no doubt caused some confusion initially among the early Christian converts. The problem of scribal corruption was still prevalent five hundred years later in Chaucer's day. Chaucer complains about the "negligence and rape" done to his poetry at the hands of his own scribe, Adam, in his short poem, "Chaucer's Wordes Unto Adam, His Owne Scrivyen."

SCRIBAL -E: When a scribe adds an unpronounced -e to words for reasons of manuscript spacing, this is called a scribal -e. This practice was common in the days before English orthography became standardized. Note that this practice should not be confused with the Middle English final -e, which often is pronounced as an unstressed syllable at the end of words in Chaucer and writings of the fourteenth century.

SCRIBE: A literate individual who reproduces the works of other authors by copying them from older texts or from a dictating author. In many parts of the ancient world, such as Classical Rome and Classical Greece, a large number of scribes were slaves who belonged to wealthy government officials and to poets or authors. In other cultures such as Egypt or Tibet, scribes have been seen as priestly or semi-magical individuals. In the medieval period, many monks were given the task of copying classics from the earlier period along with Bibles and patristic writings. Their efforts preserved much of Greco-Roman philosophy and history that might otherwise have been lost. See also auctor, scrivener and scriptorium.

SCRIM: In drama, a flimsy curtain that becomes transparent when backlit, permitting action to take place under varying lighting.

SCRIPTORIUM: An area set aside in a monastery for monks to work as scribes and copy books.

SCRIVENER: Another term for a scribe. The term scrivener became especially common during the 1700s and 1800s for legal copyists, as evidenced in works such as Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener." See scribe above.

SECONDARY SOURCE: Literary scholars distinguish between primary sources, secondary sources, and educational resources. Students should also. To understand the difference, click here.

SECONDARY STRESS: A stress less prominent than the primary stress--often indicated by a grave accent mark. See chart of common diacritical markings for more information.

SECOND LANGUAGE: In addition to a first language (i.e., a native language), a second language is any language used frequently for communication, trade, diplomacy, scholarship, or other important purposes.

SECOND-PERSON POINT OF VIEW: See discussion under point of view.

SECOND SOUND SHIFT: Another term for the High German Shift.

SELF-REFLEXIVITY: Writing has self-reflexivity if it somehow refers to itself. (Critics also call this being self-referential.) For instance, the following sentence has self-reflexive traits:

This is not a sentence.

Here, the demonstrative pronoun this refers to the larger sentence that contains it--the sentence's subject-matter is its own structure as a sentence. Postmodern writing has become especially fond of this artistic technique, employing metafiction and metapoetry. Self-reflexivity calls attention to its own artifice, violates verisimilitude, or breaks the boundaries between sign, signifier and signified. See metaliterature.

SEMANTIC CHANGE: A change in what a word or phrase means.

SEMANTIC CONTAMINATION: Change of meaning that occurs when two words sound alike. Because the words are so similar, often the meaning of one becomes attached to the other. This is especially likely with foreign loan words. For example, the Old English word dream originally meant "joy." However, the Scandinavian loan word draumr meant "vision while asleep." Through semantic contamination via the Viking invasions, the English word dream gained its current meaning, as Algeo points out (277).

SEMANTIC MARKING: When the meaning of a word is limited semantically, that word is said to possess a semantic marking. See marked word and unmarked word.

SEMANTICS: The study of actual meaning in languages--especially the meanings of individual words and word combinations in phrases and sentences--as opposed to other linguistic aspects like grammar, morphology, etymology, and syntax.

SEMIOLOGY: Another term for semiotics.

SEMIOTICS: The study of both verbal and nonverbal signs. In Charles Sanders Peirce's thinking, a sign may fall into several possible categories:

iconic signs bear some natural resemblance to what they signify. For instance, a map of Tennessee is an iconic representation of a "real world" geography.
indexical signs show some causal connection with what they signify. For instance, a stylized image of smoke as a sign indicating "fire" would be an indexical sign.
symbolic signs have an arbitrary or conventional relationship with what they signify. Note that in linguistics, almost all verbal sounds and written letters fall in the category of symbolic signs. Using the sounds /c/ and /a/ and /t/ to represent a furred quadroped that hunts mice, or the graphemes <c>, <a>, and <t> as a visual representation of those sounds, is purely arbitrary.

SEMITIC: A non-Indo-European family of languages including Arabic and Hebrew.

SEMIVOWEL: A sound articulated in the same way as a vowel sound, but which functions like a consonant typically. Examples include [w] and [y]. In some languages such as Welsh, these can function as graphemes for pure vowels.

SENEX AMANS (from Latin "ancient lover"; also spelled senex amanz in Old French): A stock character in medieval fabliaux, courtly romances, and classical comedies, the senex amans is an old, ugly, jealous man who is married to a younger, attractive but unhappy woman. He is often a poor lover (or even impotent) with bad breath, wrinkled skin, and grey hair. He is frequently cuckolded by a younger, handsome, virile man who secretly seduces his wife. We find examples of the senex amans in Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" and "The Merchant's Tale," and in various other fabliaux. Likewise, the motif also appears in the medieval French lais such as Marie de France's "Guigemar" and similar works such as Tristan and Iseult. The motif of the senex amans often becomes useful for fast characterization, since it often can quickly cast a predatory light on an elderly male antagonist. An example of such use would be the old king of Ghana pursuing the young Imoinda in Aphra Behn's Oronooko, or any of the aging aristocrats sadistically pursuing young virtuous peasant girls in gothic novels.

SENRYU: The senryu is a satirical form of the haiku. The form originates in Edo with the poet Karai Senryu (1718-1790). While the haiku attempt to avoid excessive "cleverness," vulgarity, humor, or explicit moralizing on the poet's part, the senryu embraces these elements. The genre allows a greater liberty of diction. Its tone is less lofty than the Zen-like tone found in many haiku, and it often focuses on the distortions and failings of human nature rather than the beauty of nature. Conventional topics include mothers-in-law, shrewish wives, women of disrepute, the antics of bachelors, and misbehavior among the clergy. Here is an example of a senryu:

When she wails
At the top of her voice,
The husband gives in.

As Joan Giroux suggests in The Haiku Form, the humor and implicit lesson in such senryu are very appealing to European and American writers. It is a genre much more accessible to the Western poet, accustomed as we are to logic rather than Zen. She writes:

Would-be writers of English haiku are often dismayed to have their Japanese friends remark, "Your poem is more like senryu. It is too philosophical." It is not surprising, therefore, that senryu appeals strongly to Western readers. The Western tradition of logic rather than intuition makes senryu in some respects easier [for Western poets] to write than haiku. (22-23)

Contrast senryu with haiku. See also kigo, tanka, haikai, and hokku.

SENSIBILITY, LITERATURE OF: Eighteenth-century literature that values emotionalism over rationalism. This literature tends to perceive feelings as more reliable guides to morality and truth than abstract principles, and thus it tends to view human beings as essentially benevolent--a sharp contrast with the idea of Original Sin and total depravity in Calvinist writings.

SENTIMENTAL NOVEL: An eighteenth-century or early nineteenth-century novel emphasizing pathos rather than reason and focusing on an optimistic view of the essential goodness of human nature. Examples include Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield, and Henry Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling.

SEPTENARY: Another term for heptameter--a line consisting of seven metrical feet.

SEPTUAGINT (Latin, septuaginta, "seventy"): A Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) produced in the third century BCE. According to an apocryphal legend found in the "Letter of Aristeas," seventy-two Jewish scribes were asked to translate the Torah into Greek for inclusion in the Ptolemaic library. The legend states that they all finished at exactly the same time (seventy-two days) and produced exactly identical translations with no transcription errors or corrections. Although most Biblical scholars dismiss this legend today as implausible and see the story as originating much later than the actual translation, the Septuagint provides an important manuscript comparison with the Masoretic texts. The Septuagint is still used in the Eastern Orthodox Church as the basis of its liturgy. In medieval writing, the Septuagint is often referred to only as the Roman numerals LXX (i.e., "seventy").

SEQUEL (from Latin sequi, to follow): A literary work complete in itself, but continuing the narrative of an earlier work. It is a new story that extends or develops characters and situations found in an earlier work. Two sequels following an original work (together) are called a trilogy. Three sequels following an original work together are called a tetralogy.Often sequels have a reputation for inferior artistry compared to the original publication since they are often hastily written from the desire to capitalize on earlier financial success. Examples include Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer Abroad, which is a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and Alexandra Ripley's Scarlett, which is a sequel to Mitchell's Gone With the Wind. In the late twentieth century, it became common retroactively to write "prequels," a later book with the same geographic setting or characters, but which takes place in an earlier time.

SERF: A medieval peasant tied to a specific plot of land in the feudal system of government. He was allowed to work this land in exchange for services to his lord. In the early medieval period, probably 90% of the European population was a part of this group of agricultural laborers. In the late medieval period, increasing numbers of these peasants became freemen who owned their own land or worked as craftsmen in city guilds. See discussion under feudalism.

SERIES: A number of novels related to each other by plot, setting, character, or some combination of these traits. Examples include The Leatherstocking Tales of James Fenimore Cooper, C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and cheap pulp fiction collections like The Executioner or the Longarm westerns are all examples of series. Contrast with prequel, sequel, trilogy and tetralogy.

SERMON: See discussion under homily.

SERMON JOLI: Another term for a sermon joyeaux. See discussion under mock sermon.

SERMON JOYEUX (also sermon joli): See discussion under mock sermon.

SESTET: (1) The last part of an Italian or Petrarchan sonnet, it consists of six lines that rhyme with a varying pattern. Common rhyme patterns include CDECDE or CDCCDC. See sonnet, below. (2) Any six-line stanza or a six-line unit of poetry.

SETS: The physical objects and props necessary as scenery in a play (if they are left on-stage rather than in a character's possession).

SETTING: The general locale, historical time, and social circumstances in which the action of a fictional or dramatic work occurs; the setting of an episode or scene within a work is the particular physical location in which it takes place. For example, the general setting of Joyce's "The Dead," is a quay named Usher's Island, west of central Dublin in the early 1900s, and the initial setting is the second floor apartment of the Misses Morkan. Setting can be a central or peripheral factor in the meaning of a work. The setting is usually established through description--but sometimes narration or dialogue also reveals the location and time.

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET: See discussion under sonnet.

SHAMANISM: A religious practice first identified by anthropologists studying hunter-gatherer tribes in Siberia, Alaska, and northern Canada in which a shaman would serve as a mediator between his tribal community and the spirit world. The shaman would bridge this gap through spiritual exercises (such as chanting to induce trances) or through symbolic journeys (like descending into a cave or climbing a mountain) or through magical transformations (such as donning an elk skin or a mask to become one with the Spirit of All Elk). In these shamanistic religions, the shaman was thought either to project his soul magically out of his body to reach the spirit world or else to physically enter it through his journey. Once in the spirit world, he would communicate with the spirits to ensure a good hunt or good weather, to seek spiritual advice, or to ask for assistance with curing a disease. The spirits were typically animistic or totemic in nature rather than anthropomorphic.

In its strictest original sense, shamanism applies only to the practices of a half-dozen or so tribes in the far north around the Arctic Circle, but some scholars in comparative religion have popularized the term and applied it to similar beliefs among South American, African, Australian, and Polynesian ethnic groups. Some go so far as to argue that hunter-gatherer societies naturally tend to form shamanistic religions, or that shamanism is humanity's "original" or "default" religious belief before the rise of agriculture caused vegetationsdämons to complicate the pantheon. In classical mythology and sacrificial rites, many features of individual myths appear to originate in shamanistic hunting rituals, as scholars like Walter Burkert have argued.

SHAPED POETRY: See concrete poetry.

SHARERS: In the Renaissance, these were senior actors holding business shares in the stock of a theatrical company. In such a joint-stock arrangement, the shareholders would pool their funds to buy supplies, make costumes and props, hire works, and write new plays. They would share profits (and losses!) equally. Greenblatt notes that, "Shakespeare was not only a longtime 'sharer' of the Lord Chamberlain's Men but, from 1599, a 'housekeeper,' the holder of a one-eighth share in the Globe playhouse" (1141).

SHIBBOLETH: Among linguists, the term refers to any language use that distinguishes between one "in"-group and another "out"-group. The term comes from the biblical account of how Israelites would ask suspicious foreigners to say the word "shibboleth"; if the speaker pronounced it "sibboleth," marking the talker as an enemy, he or she would be seized and killed. The term often appears in the phrase, "to speak the shibboleth."

SHIFTING: A general term in linguistics for any slight alteration in a word's meaning, or the creation of an entirely new word by changing the use of an expression.

SHIH POETRY: Shih is Chinese for "songs." There is no general word for "poetry" specifically in Chinese, but there are exact words for different genres of poetry. Shih is the basic or common Chinese verse. The term encompassed folksongs, hymns, and libretti. The earliest extant shih in five-word lines may date back to 100 BCE. Contrast with fu poetry.

SHORTENING: In linguistics, the word has two meanings: (1) creating a new word by omitting part of a longer expression, and (2) changing a long vowel to a short one.

SHORT STORY: "A brief prose tale," as Edgar Allan Poe labeled it. This work of narrative fiction may contain description, dialogue and commentary, but usually plot functions as the engine driving the art. The best short stories, according to Poe, seek to achieve a single, major, unified impact. See single effect theory, below.

SHORT SYLLABLE: In linguistics, any syllable containing a short vowel, but followed by only one consonant or no consonant at all. Do not confuse this term with a short vowel (see below).

SHORT VOWEL: As Algeo defines it, "A vowel of lesser duration than a corresponding long vowel" (329).

SIBILANT: In linguistics, any hissing sound made with a groove down the center of the tongue.

SIGN: In linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure bases his theory of signification (semiology) upon the sign, an arbitrary mark, sound, or gesture that becomes imbued with meaning because it is part of a larger, more complex system of other marks or sounds with their own meaning. The linguistic sign is the union of the signifier (a collection of sounds that distinguishes this sign from others) and the signified (a concept or meaning arbitrarily and conventionally assigned to this collection of sounds). Note that the signified exists only in the head of a language user. The referent in linguistics is the "real world" equivalent, the extralinguistic object the signified points to in the physical universe. Saussure, however, deliberately ignores the referent as something existing outside the realm of linguistics proper, prefering to treat language as a system of arbitrary distinctions without any positive terms.

See also parole and langue.

SIMILE: An analogy or comparison implied by using an adverb such as like or as, in contrast with a metaphor which figuratively makes the comparison by stating outright that one thing is another thing. This figure of speech is of great antiquity. It is common in both prose and verse works.

A poetic example comes from John Milton's Paradise Lost:

Anon out of the earth a Fabrick huge
Rose like an Exhalation, with the sound
Of Dulcet Symphony and voices sweet. (I. 710-12)

Even more famously, Robert Burns states:

O, my luve is like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June:
O, my luve is like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune

A simile is an example of a trope. Contrast with epic simile and metaphor, above.

"SINGLE EFFECT" THEORY: Edgar Allan Poe's theory about what constituted a good short story. According to Poe, a good short story achieved its unity by achieving a single emotional effect on the reader. He writes of it in his review of Hawthorne's Twice-Told Tales and describes it as "a certain unique single effect to be wrought out" (Quoted in Thomas Woodson, ed., Twentieth-Century Interpretations of "The Fall of the House of Usher" from Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1969.)

SINO-TIBETAN: A group of languages spoken in China, Tibet, and Burma, including Mandarin.

SITUATIONAL IRONY: Another term for universal irony. See discussion under irony.

SKALD: The Old Norse or Scandinavian equivalent of a bard or court singer. Most of the surviving skaldic poetry deals with contemporary Viking chieftains and kings--usually making extensive use of kennings. Medieval skalds included Bragi Boddason (c. 825), Eyvindr Finnson (c. 950), Egill Skallagrimsson (c. 850), and Gunnlaugr Ormstunga Illugason (c. 990-1020?). The skalds faded in importance after 1000 CE.

SKAZ (plural skazka, from the Russian verb skazat, "to tell"): A Russian yarn or tall tale in which the author dons the voice or persona of a fictitious narrator (typically an uneducated peasant). The genre thus allows the author to characterize the speaker through speech peculiarities (dialect pronunciation, malapropisms, non-standard grammar, slang, and regional neologisms). See Harkins 360 for more information.

SKENE (Greek "tent"): In classical Greek theaters, the skene was a building in the front of the orchestra that contained front and side doors from which actors could quickly enter and exit. The skene probably also served as an area for storing costumes and props.

SLANG: Informal diction or the use of vocabulary considered inconsistent with the preferred formal wording common among the educated or elite in a culture. For instance, formal wording might require a message such as this one: "Greetings. How are my people doing?" The slang version might be as follows: "Yo. Whassup with my peeps?"

SLANT RHYME (also called inexact rhyme): Rhymes created out of words with similar but not identical sounds. In most of these instances, either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are identical, or vice versa. This type of rhyme is also called approximate rhyme, inexact rhyme, near rhyme, half rhyme, off rhyme, analyzed rhyme, or suspended rhyme. The example below comes from William Butler Yeats:

Heart-smitten with emotion I sink down
My heart recovering with covered eyes;
Wherever I had looked I had looked upon
My permanent or impermanent images.

Slant rhyme has also been used for splendid intentional effect in poems such as Philip Larkins' "Toads" and "Toads Revisited," and has been increasingly popular with postmodern British poets after World War II. Contrast with eye-rhyme and exact rhyme.

SLAPSTICK COMEDY: Low comedy in which humor depends almost entirely on physical actions and sight gags. The antics of the three stooges and the modern fourth stooge, Adam Sandler, often fall into this category.

SLAVE NARRATIVE: A narrative, often autobiographical in origin, about a slave's life, perhaps including his original capture, his punishments and daily labor, and his eventual escape to freedom. Examples include Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Aphra Behn's Oroonoko, and Frederick Douglass's abolitionist writings and speeches. Contrast with captivity narratives.

SLAVIC: An eastern European sub-branch of Indo-European.

SMOOTHING: In linguistics, the monophthongization of several Old English diphthongs.

SOCCUS: A soft shoe worn by actors in Latin comedies, in contrast with the buskins or kothorni worn in tragedies. Our modern English word sock comes from this term. Often, the word sock is used a metonym for comedy in contrast with buskin as a metonym for tragedy. Hence, Harry Shaw explains John Milton's reference in L'Allegro to "the buskin'd stage" and to Ben Jonson's "learned sock"--i.e., tragedy and comedy (43).

SOCIAL DIALECT: In linguistics, a dialect used by a special social group rather than through an entire ethnicity or region.

SOCIAL REALISM: In literature, a branch of realism, especially significant in Russian writing, that focuses on the lives of middle and lower class characters (see realism). At its worst, the movement becomes mere propaganda to highlight bourgeois evils, proletariat virtues, and glorifies the Soviet Union under the Stalinist regime. At its best, this movement exposes ideological mystification and presents accurate depictions of incipient class conflict.

SOCIAL SATIRE: Satire aimed specifically at the general foibles of society rather than an attack on an individual. See discussion under satire.

SOCRATIC DIALOGUE: An attempt to explore a philosophical problem by presenting a series of speakers who argue about an issue and ask each other questions. These various individuals hash out their ideas, accepting some and dismissing others, to arrive at a conclusion (or sometimes merely arrive nearer a conclusion). This model is opposed to the "lecture" model of teaching in which single authoritative experts present their conclusions before students who accept and memorize the experts' judgment, or the "treatise" model in which an author summarizes his or her thinking in an essay for the reader. In the case of Greek writings of Plato, Plato often presents the material as a recorded debate between Socrates and his pupils, or between Socrates and intellectuals of differing opinions, such as Gorgias or Diogenes. Examples of Socratic dialogue can be found in The Symposium, in which a number of dinner guests define the nature of love, and in The Republic, in which a group of thinkers speculate about what constitutes ideal government. See also socratic irony.

SOCRATIC IRONY: Adapting a form of ironic false modesty in which a speaker claims ignorance regarding a question or philosophical problem. The speaker then turns to another "authority" and raises the question humbly, asking for the expert's answer. When the "authority," presents an answer, the "modest" original speaker continues to ask pointed questions, eventually revealing the limitations or inadequacies of the supposed expert--all the while protesting his or her own inferior knowledge. The irony comes from the speaker's continuing presentation of himself as stupid even as he demolishes inferior ideas others present to him. This is the method Socrates supposedly took regarding philosophical inquiry, and it is named socratic irony in his honor. See also irony and socratic dialogue, above.

SOFT SCIENCE FICTION: See discussion under science fiction.

SOLAR MYTH: Alvin Boyd Kuhn and Max Müller were philologists who attempted to explain the origin of a number of myths and religious practices by linking them to the animistic worship of various celestial phenomena including meteorological events (weather gods), sky gods (e.g. Ouranos), and astronomical bodies (stars, planets, moon, and most especially the sun). The name "Solar Deity" refers to such a god generally, and "Solar Myth" is thus the term most often linked with this school of thought. Scholars in the "Solar Myth" school tend to trace multiple deities or heroes (even in a single narrative) back to primitive sun worship and identify analogues in various legends of sun gods. Some medievalists like Roger S. Loomis have gone so far as to trace various Arthurian characters back to Celtic Solar Deities. The theory fell into disfavor in late twentieth-century scholarship partly because of its reductive "one-size-fits-all" approach to mythology, and partly because some of the claims of Kuhn and Müller have been demonstrably proven false. For instance, while Solar Myth theorists first argued that various tribal deities and heros in Homer and in Hindu mythology were later incarnations of early sun deities, later archeological or philological evidence showed some of these local gods were real historical figures who were later elevated to godhood in the belief of future generations. An example of this was Alfred Lyall's demonstration that the names of certain Rajasthan deities could be linked to historical Rajput clan leaders who lived only a century or two before their "apotheosis" into mythology.

SOLECISM (from the Greek city Soloi): The area around the city of Soloi in ancient Cilicia had a population who spoke a nonstandard form of Attic Greek. Accordingly, the dominant Athenians tended to make fun of them, parody them in plays, beat them up for lunch money, etc. The term soloikos thus came to connote grammatical mistakes, blunders in declension, errors in diction, and whatnot. This gives rise to our equivalent modern English term, solecism. David Smith notes solecisms can be helpful. In the original koine Greek, the New Testament book of Revelation has a large number of solecisms, a fact quite annoying to Saint Augustine, but which has been very useful to modern biblical scholars seeking to distinguish John of Patmos (the author of Revelation) from earlier church fathers like the disciple John (who lived too early and spoke a different dialect).

SOLILOQUY: A monologue spoken by an actor at a point in the play when the character believes himself to be alone. The technique frequently reveals a character's innermost thoughts, including his feelings, state of mind, motives or intentions. The soliloquy often provides necessary but otherwise inaccessible information to the audience. The dramatic convention is that whatever a character says in a soliloquy to the audience must be true, or at least true in the eyes of the character speaking (i.e., the character may tell lies to mislead other characters in the play, but whatever he states in a soliloquy is a true reflection of what the speaker believes or feels). The soliloquy was rare in Classical drama, but Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights used it extensively, especially for their villains. Well-known examples include speeches by the title characters of Macbeth, Richard III, and Hamlet and also Iago in Othello. (Contrast with an aside.) Unlike the aside, a soliloquy is not usually indicated by specific stage directions.

SONG: A lyric poem with a number of repeating stanzas (called refrains), written to be set to music in either vocal performance or with accompaniment of musical instruments. See dawn song and lyric, above and stanza, below.

SONNET: A lyric poem of fourteen lines, usually in iambic pentameter, with rhymes arranged according to certain definite patterns. It usually expresses a single, complete idea or thought with a reversal, twist, or change of direction in the concluding lines. There are three common forms:

(1) Italian or Petrarchan

(2) English or Shakespearean

(3) Miltonic

The Petrarchan sonnet has an eight line stanza (called an octave) followed by a six line stanza (called a sestet). The octave has two quatrains rhyming abba, abba, the first of which presents the theme, the second further develops it. In the sestet, the first three lines reflect on or exemplify the theme, while the last three bring the poem to a unified end. The sestet may be arranged cdecde, cdcdcd, or cdedce.

The Shakespearean sonnet uses three quatrains; each rhymed differently, with a final, independently rhymed couplet that makes an effective, unifying climax to the whole. Its rhyme scheme is abab, cdcd, efef, gg. Typically, the final two lines follow a "turn" or a "volta," (sometimes spelled volte, like volte-face) because they reverse, undercut, or turn from the original line of thought to take the idea in a new direction.

The Miltonic sonnet is similar to the Petrarchan sonnet, but it does not divide its thought between the octave and the sestet--the sense or line of thinking runs straight from the eighth to ninth line. Also, Milton expands the sonnet's repertoire to deal not only with love as the earlier sonnets did, but also to include politics, religion, and personal matters.

SONNET CYCLE: Another term for a sonnet sequence. See discussion below.

SONNET SEQUENCE: Also called a sonnet cycle, this term refers to a gathering or arrangement of sonnets by a single author so that the sonnets in that group or arrangement deal with a single theme, situation, a particular lady, or alternatively deal with what appears to be a sequential story. Petrarch, Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare all engaged in this practice, or at least the early editors of their works did. The first major sonnet cycle in English was Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophil and Stella (written in the early 1580s, published in 1591). Others include Daniel's Delia, Lodge's Phillis, Drayton's Idea's Mirror, Constable's Diana, and Spenser's Amoretti. Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, however, are best known of any sonnet sequences today.

SONS OF BEN: A school of literature consisting mostly of cavalier poets who were admirers/imitators of Ben Jonson. The Sons of Ben focused on "lyrics of love and gallant compliment," as M. H. Abrams phrases it (213). The Sons of Ben include Sir John Suckling, Thomas Carew, Robert Herrick, and Richard Lovelace.

SOUBRETTE: A maidservant of independent and saucy temperament in the Italian commedia dell'arte. This stock character helps two or more young lovers overcome the blocking agent that prevents their happy union.

SOURCE: (1) An earlier work of literature or folklore used as the basis of a later work. Scholars use the term source only when it is clear that one of the manuscripts or one piece of oral transmission influenced a specific later work. If that relationship is not clear, two works sharing similar material or subject-matter are said to be analogues if it is uncertain which one influenced the other or if both might originate from some third, lost source. See also stemma and Ur-text. (2) When students write a research paper, their sources are the original places where they found facts, ideas, and quotations. Primary sources are the main work of literature the students are citing and analyzing (such as Shakespeare's Macbeth or Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises). A secondary source comes from all other materials--especially those later writings scholars produce about Macbeth or Hemingway (or whatever the topic is). Secondary sources might include articles in peer-reviewed journals, biographies of the author, books analyzing or discussing a particular work of literature, and so on. All literary analyses should use quotations or references to the primary text as the main componant of an argument--especially in the case of a close-reading. Longer literary assignments such as research papers should also make use of appropriate secondary research. See also peer-reviewed journal.

SPACE OPERA: A subgenre of "soft" science fiction especially popular between 1930-1960, often used in a derogatory sense. These space operas are novels or short stories set in the distant future after humanity has spent centuries or millenia colonizing the entire galaxy--or sometimes multiple galaxies. The narratives typically feature some form of easy space travel via imaginary technologies such as "hyperspace drives" or "warp nacelles." This easy method of travel and colonization allows the formation of huge space fleets to fight each other using laser cannons and nuclear missiles. Behind these aramadas, vast interstellar empires compete with each other (or with rebel forces, or with alien species) for territorial control or political power. The governments imagined in these books are often feudal in nature or else they are based loosely on empires from Earth's past history--i.e., the Roman Empire, the British Empire of the 19th century, the Caliphates of the Middle East, the Samauri Shogunates of 16th century Japan, and so on. In other cases, seeking models for future history, the authors frequently rely upon parallels with the American West or the exploration of Africa, and they create parallels between sailing ships and spaceships, even going so far as adding space pirates. They frequently present readers with stark contrasts in social and geographic terrain--i.e., contrasting ice-worlds with desert worlds, or technologically wealthy space-merchants with impoverished barbarians, and so on. The stories often focus on characterization, drama, and (most especially) action rather theme, symbolism or other literary devices.

The first example is probably Edison's Conquest of Mars (published 1898). The editor Brian Aldiss later amassed a two-volume collection of space operas prior to 1979 in Galactic Empires. Other famous space operas include E.E. Smith's Lensman series, and the genre's literary grandchildren include Frank Herbert's Dune series, Lois McMaster Bujold's "Miles Vorkosigan" saga, Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, and pop culture films and television series like Star Wars and Star Trek, both of which have spawned literally hundreds of spinoffs and pulp fiction novels in their own rights.

SPEAKER, POETIC: See poetic speaker.

SPECIALIZATION: A semantic change restricting the referents of a word--i.e., a linguistic movement from a more general to a more specific meaning for a word. For instance, the Old English word wif (Modern English wife) once meant merely "woman." However, through linguistic specialization it has come to mean "married woman" more specifically. In Middle English, a single French loanword might be adopted twice over different centuries--once from early Anglo-Norman French, and afterward from Central French. They would have slight differences from each other in spelling and pronunciation--so English speakers would give each one a slightly specialized meaning--even though the two originally meant the same thing in French. Examples include chief (leader of a war band) and chef (leader of a kitchen). Both were once the same word more or less meaning "leader" generally.

SPECULATIVE FICTION: Also called "alternative history," speculative fiction is science fiction that explores how the "real world" we live in today might be different if historic events had unfolded with slight changes. For instance, Robert Harris' novel Fatherland asks, what would Germany look like three decades later if Nazi Germany had won World War II? Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale asks, what the U.S. would look like if a reproductive crisis (widespread sterility) allowed a fundamentalist regime to come to power and control women's reproduction?

SPEECH ACT THEORY: An idea set forth by J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, which argues that language is often a mode of action rather than a means of communication or conveying information. Language-use that conveys information is called constative, and constative sentences by their very nature are either true or false in the sense that they are accurate or inaccurate. Language-use that serves as a mode of action is called performative. Performative language causes something to happen merely by making assertion. Examples include the "I do" statement in a wedding ceremony. Here, the act of making the assertion is the same as the action itself. Other examples include the following ones:

betting ("I bet ten dollars that he drops the ball.")
composing a will ("To my beloved daughter, I leave my house and my second-best bed.")
umpiring ("Strike three! You are out!")
passing sentence ("This court finds you guilty of negligent homicide.")
christening ("You are christened John.")
knighting ("I dub thee Sir Lancelot.")
blessing ("In nomine patri, filii, et spiritu sancti, benedicite")
firing ("You're fired.")
bidding ("I bid ten dollars.")
baptizing ("I baptize you in the name of the father and the son and the holy ghost.")

In these examples above, the act of making the assertion is the same as performing the act. Thus, these are examples of performative language.

SPEECH PREFIX: Often abbreviated "s.p.," this term in drama refers to a character's name or an abbreviated version of a character's name which indicates what actor is speaking subsequent words in the text of a play. Conventionally, in modern drama a colon or period separates the speech prefix from the lines to be read. Here is an example with the prefixes indicated in bold:

CASS: Dost thou hear, my honest friend?
CLOWN: No, I hear not your honest friend, I hear you. (Othello 3.1.20-21)

Here, the first speech prefix (Cass:) indicates Cassio is speaking the subsequent lines. Cassio's words end when the next speech prefix indicates the Clown is responding to his question.

SPELLING PRONUNCIATION: An unhistorical way of pronouncing a word based on the spelling of a word.

SPELLING REFORM: Any effort to make spelling closer to actual pronunciation.

SPENSERIAN STANZA: A nine-line stanza rhyming in an ababbcbcc pattern in which the first eight lines are pentameter and the last line is an alexandrine. The name spenserian comes from the form's most famous user, Spenser, who used it in The Fairie Queene. Other examples include Keat's "Eve of Saint Agnes" and Shelley's "Adonais." The Spenserian stanza is probably the longest and most intricate stanza generally employed in narrative poetry.

SPIRANT: Another term in linguistics for a fricative.

SPIRIT GUIDE: A conventional figure in mythology, in the medieval visio and in shamanistic myths that serves as (1) a guide to a lost or wandering soul or to (2) a guide to the dreaming psyche of another character. The Greeks, for instance, referred to Hermes Mercury as a psychopompos, a soul-carrier to direct the deceased through the caverns of Avernus to the edge of the River Styx, where Charon would ferry the souls of the dead across the water into Hades. The figure of Anubis guided Egyptian spirits to the afterlife, and so on. In the medieval tradition of the visio, the spirit guide would serve as a commentator for the confused soul of a sleeping individual. Thus, we have a grandfather figure guiding our narrator in the Somnium Scipionis, or Virgil and Beatrice steering Dante through the Inferno and upwards toward Paradiso, or the ghost of Pearl explaining to her grieving father the nature of heaven. Chaucer gleefully throws this medieval convention on its head in The Book of the Duchess by making the narrator slip out of bed naked to follow his spirit-guide (a puppy) for a short while during a hunt--only to get lost and bumble on without it until he finds the grieving Knight in Black. Non-medieval examples of the spirit guide include the ghost of Marley who chastizes Ebeneezer Scrooge in Dickens' A Christmas Carol, the totemic spirits prominent in the visionquests of Amerindian tribes, or even the ebon bird guiding the rock-n-roll revenant seeking revenge in Brandon Lee's film, The Crow.

SPIRITUAL AUTOBIOGRAPHY: An autobiography (usually Christian) that focuses on an individual's spiritual growth. The plot is typically chronological in structure, and it usually focuses on inner struggles within the narrator, moving from pre-religious life, to a psychological crisis followed by a conversion narrative, to labor within the church or within evangelical missions. The work often concludes with an implied (or explicit) call to readers to convert. Examples include Saint Patrick's Confession and Saint Augustine's Confessions.

SPONDAIC: The adjective spondaic describes a line of poetry in which the feet are composed of successive spondees. See spondee, below.

SPONDEE: In scansion, a spondee is a metrical foot consisting of two successive strong beats. The spondee typically is "slower" and "heavier" to read than an iamb or a dactyl. Some words and phrases in English naturally form spondees when they alone constitute a poetic foot. Examples of such spondees include football, Mayday, shortcake, plop-plop, fizz-fizz, dumbbell, drop-dead, goof-off, race track, bathrobe, breakdown, dead man, black hole, and love song. See meter for extended discussion, or click here to download a PDF handout that contrasts spondees with other types of poetic feet.

SPOOF: A comic piece of film or literature that ostensibly presents itself as a "genre" piece, but actually pokes fun at the clichés or conventions of the genre through imitative satire. Examples from the twentieth century include the novel Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story, which is a postmodern spoof of those literary conventions found in Gothic horror novels about vampires and modern Harlequin romances about boy-meets-girl narratives. Examples from medieval literature include Chaucer's "Sir Thopas," which mocks the popular meter and conventions of medieval romance. Late twentieth-century films have proven especially prone to being spoofed in the last three decades, as witnessed by Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, The Naked Gun 33 and 1/3, Blazing Saddles, and Young Frankenstein, which spoof popular genres such as film noire, police dramas, the western film, and 1930s black and white classic horror movies, respectively.

SPOONERISM: The comic (and usually unintentional) transposition of two initial consonants or other sounds. For example, saying "the queer old dean" when one means to say, "the dear old queen," or speaking of "beery wenches" when one means "weary benches" would be spoonerisms. The word comes from the flustered English clergyman and Oxford don, Reverend W. A.