In an analysis of stress and intonation, stress is shown to distinguish semantic and grammatical meaning on every level of language. It is suggested that the distinction between stress and intonation is particularly important in teaching English as a second language. Written texts and fabricated examples of dialogue are used, with a focus on speech as oral production of texts. It is proposed that a regular correlation can be seen between the degree of semantic meaning attached to a syllable and the degree of stress it carries. Rules for the distribution of functionally contrastive degrees of stress are shown to operate on the word level where roots are stressed in constrast with affixes. On the phrase level, lexical and structural words are distinguished by stress, and the semantic focus of the phrase is marked by primary stress. Stress operates beyond the phrase on the text level to link sentences and groups of sentences in connected discourse. Anaphoric stress is a cohesive device that expresses the relationship between referents and references. On the other hand, intonation is a nonstructural feature that utilizes pitch contours projected on phrase stress groups. This involves a culturally conditioned expression of attitude to the speaking situation. (SW)