Emphasis is assumed to be something that speakers do intentionally. In the framework of interactional sociolinguistics, emphasis can be seen as something that is achieved through speakers’ framing and contextualizing practices (Goffman 1974, 1981; Gumperz 1982, 1992), while in conversation analysis it is an effect that is achieved not just by the speaker, but collaboratively by all participants (Selting 1994). Furthermore, emphasis is not only expressed through language. In face-to-face interaction it can also be signalled through other semiotic modalitites such as facial expression, eye contact, gesture or body posture and movement, in print through layout and graphological devices, and in the audio-visual media through visualization, sound and on-screen print (Baldry 2000; Kress & van Leeuwen 1996). Finally, emphasis can be, and most frequently is, expressed not just through one device, but through a cluster of features from different levels and modes of semiotic organization, of which language is only one. This paper will begin with a review of traditional studies of emphasis in rhetoric, stylistics, and functional linguistics. It will then address the problem of background norms, markedness and salience before providing a — necessarily selective — account of the resources of emphasis, and of some of the strategies and practices employed by participants in the achievement of emphatic effects in discourse. The paper will conclude with some considerations regarding the function of emphasis on the macro-level of societal discourses, as well as with some questions for future research. The discussion and examples will be based on English throughout.