diegetic
I had a long struggle trying to remember this adjective and use it properly in a conversation last night. Diegesis is a fascinating concept in our era where musical soundtracks are standard because we have little to no conception of television or film without music cues. The ubiquity of music cues has left us finding it shocking when they are absent, when there is no audio or musical track. Buffy the Vampire Slayer used this very effectively in "Hush" and "The Body". It was once used well in a Wikipedia article about The Wire--which brilliantly illustrated the narrative style of the programme and the interplay of diegetic /non-diegetic music, but alas in various iterations of the page that bit was cut and I could not find it again.
Tarantino used the diegetic/non-diegetic dichotomy wonderfully in Kill Bill: Vol. I. In the opening scene Elle Driver whistles what then would go on to be soundtrack music.
I am very fond of this succinct definition:
Diegesis
The denotative material of film narrative, it includes, according to Christian Metz, not only the narration itself, but also the fictional space and time dimension implied by the narrative. (I found it here.)
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