ABSTRACT
In emphatic speech, either interrupting on-going face-to-face communication dominated by nonverbal acts, or enlivening the epic flow of narration, the expression of self, ego, or agenthood begins to be perceptible. An old Eipo woman sitting in front of her hut and repairing netbags looks up and watches some smoke on the far away western mountain slopes. She says, emphatically, with a sing-song effect, imitating the greeting-songs and at the same time expressing compassion. A special case of emphatic speech are calls and dialogues in narratives. The peak of a story can be accompanied by, or realized through, direct speech or a dramatic dialogue. The chapter shows that the ego appears during face-to-face communication in dialogues in order to express grief or dismay in case of sickness. The individual is at work in the forms of emphatic speech and the genres in which an ego ceremonially looks back. These ways of speaking allow authors to say ‘ego’.
