The ten essays that compose this volume are directed to a examination of an ethnographic phenomenon of singular importance: the prevalent use of strict forms of parallelism in traditional oral communication. In communication of this kind, parallelism is promoted to the status of canon, and paired correspondences, at the semantic and syntactic levels, result in what is essentially a dyadic language – the phenomenon of ‘speaking in pairs’.

Since such forms of parallelism are widely attested in the oral poetry and elevated speech of a variety of peoples of the world, comprehension of this linguistic phenomenon is crucial to an understanding of oral literature. Moreover, since patterns of dyadic composition are implicated in diverse forms of communication, consideration of this phenomenon is equally important to an understanding of the ethnography of rhetoric and ritual.

The essays in this volume all deal with forms of dyadic language that occur within a single broadly defined ethnographic area, namely the islands of eastern Indonesia. Each essay is concerned with the particularities of dyadic composition in a separate cultural setting. This is in itself strategically important since it allows the possibility of co-ordinated comparison among related languages and cultures. As a whole, therefore, the volume represents a concerted attempt to focus examination on dyadic language as a special linguistic phenomenon in a comparative ethnographic context.

Eastern Indonesia, the context for this comparison, is an area of considerable linguistic diversity – a common feature of many of the areas of the world where complex forms of parallelism are particularly prominent. Eastern Indonesia's linguistic diversity is due to both geographical and historical factors.