This paper furthers the empirical knowledge of expressive resources in the world’s languages by reporting form, semantics and pragmatics of a very conventionalized contour employed in divers languages of the Arnhem Land region in Australia. The paper displays that expressive linguistic resources are not only, and presumably not firstly employed to convey emotions, but rather to communicate intricate messages about felt emotions, and occasionally to alter these emotions via this communication process. The paper displays that expressive linguistic resources are characteristically executed, but that this does not come in the way of conveying emotions. The paper assays the details of a grief-management strategy in a cultural context where sadness is expressly fostered as an empathetic, compassionate emotion.