DOCBOOK: Presentational markup in Docbook

In strict XHTML 1.1 I can use style attributes containing CSS rules to note that a particular element should be bold, italic, red, or some such. If necessary, I can add a span element to give me something to hang the CSS off of.

Is there any equivalent in Docbook? That is, is there any way to say that I want these three words to be red? or that element to be bold? Or that this note should be in a sans serif font? Mostly I'm happy with Docbook's semantic markup, but occasionally it seems that something is missing.

XHTML lets me apply unique styles without messing up the semantic nature of my document. Does Docbook?  
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| Elliotte Rusty Harold |  | Writer/Programmer |
+-----------------------+------------------------+-------------------+ 
|          The XML Bible, 2nd Edition (Hungry Minds, 2001)           |
|              http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/books/bible2/              |
|   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0764547607/cafeaulaitA/   |
+----------------------------------+---------------------------------+
|  Read Cafe au Lait for Java News:  http://www.cafeaulait.org/      | 
|  Read Cafe con Leche for XML News: http://www.ibiblio.org/xml/     |
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