This paper presents linguistic phenomenon of emphasis in two different discourses: English and Modern Standard Arabic. Emphasis is used to indicate a more prominent or salient element of meaning. The paper presents an analysis of this phenomenon within the framework of “Speech Acts Theory". It includes various forms of emphasis in English and Modern Standard Arabic. It tries to investigate this phenomenon on various levels: the phonological, the semantic, the syntactic, and finally the pragmatic level. The results of the paper attempt to point out that emphasis in speech is a human tendency, and it is a part of human experience. The research includes the following components: abstract, introduction, aim of the study, scope of the study, sources of data, method of research, theoretical framework, English data, Arabic data, and the conclusion