Mikhail Bakhtin was right. Humans could not use the languages they know without also learning the genres which govern so much of our social life. These genres frequently consist of rules prescribing the order in which we must say things and formulaic phraseology which prescribes what can and should be said. Native speakers know only a small fraction of the formulaic genres in a speech community. This relativizes the concept of a native speaker in all situations. Koenraad Kuiper illustrates these views with an array of fascinating case studies of engagement notice writers, horse race commentators, weather forecasters, pump aerobics instructors, square dance callers, cartoonists, and Red Guards.

This quadrilingual economics dictionary is the result of many years of work. Professor Frits J. de J ong gathered material for this book since the very beginning of his professional career in the final years of the forties. Unfortunately, the author himself was not able to see the final result of his labours in book form. A mere few weeks after the completion of the manuscript, in November 1976, Professor De Jong passed away. As Hartog and Hennipman wrote in their memorials, Frits de Jong always devoted much attention to the development of concepts and terminology. Throughout his career, he exhibited great determination and perseverance in trying to achieve a clear and consistent terminology, and its subsequent use, in the science of economics. !' 2 That his efforts were mainly aimed at his native language was due to the fact that a language such as Dutch, which is only practiced in a small geographic area, faces the danger of a large-scale introduction of foreign words, specifically English/American, German and French words in this case. He always strongly resisted such a debasement of the Dutch language and sought instead to construct appropriate Dutch words for the existing English, German and French ones. An early example can be found in an article published in De Economist of 1950, entitled "De economische terminologie in het Nederlands" (The Terminology of Economics in Dutch).

Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth presents a selection of recent research advances on long term economic growth. While the contributions stem from both economic history, macro- and microeconomics and the economics of innovation, all papers depart from a common viewpoint: the key factor behind long term growth is productivity, and the latter is primarily driven by technological change. Most contributions show implicitly or explicitly that technological change is at least partly dependent on growth itself. Furthermore, technology appears to interact strongly with investment in physical and human capital as well as with changes in historical, political and institutional settings. Together these papers are an up-to-date account of the remarkable convergence in theoretical and empirical work on productivity and growth over the past decades. The first part deals with the characteristics of growth regimes over longer periods, ranging from 20 years to two centuries. The next four chapters study the determinants of productivity growth and, in some cases, productivity slowdown during the last quarter of the twentieth century. The final five chapters focus on the role of technology and innovation as the key determinants of growth. Productivity, Technology and Economic Growth is, therefore, a welcome collection for academic scholars and graduate students in economics, history and related social sciences as well as for policy makers.

This quadrilingual economics dictionary is the result of many years of work. Professor Frits J. de J ong gathered material for this book since the very beginning of his professional career in the final years of the forties. Unfortunately, the author himself was not able to see the final result of his labours in book form. A mere few weeks after the completion of the manuscript, in November 1976, Professor De Jong passed away. As Hartog and Hennipman wrote in their memorials, Frits de Jong always devoted much attention to the development of concepts and terminology. Throughout his career, he exhibited great determination and perseverance in trying to achieve a clear and consistent terminology, and its subsequent use, in the science of economics. !' 2 That his efforts were mainly aimed at his native language was due to the fact that a language such as Dutch, which is only practiced in a small geographic area, faces the danger of a large-scale introduction of foreign words, specifically English/American, German and French words in this case. He always strongly resisted such a debasement of the Dutch language and sought instead to construct appropriate Dutch words for the existing English, German and French ones. An early example can be found in an article published in De Economist of 1950, entitled "De economische terminologie in het Nederlands" (The Terminology of Economics in Dutch).

Almost three years passed since the Faculty of Economics of the University of Groningen celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 1973. Late, but not too late we hope, to present the lectures of most of our distinguished guests, who came from the United States and different European Countries to inform the Congress participants of their opinion and ideas on "25 Years of Economic Theory: Retrospect and Prospect. " The problems we met in publishing the lectures, in accordance with the agreement we made with our guests, are not unusual, as everyone knows who has been an editor of such a volume before. The promise to give a lecture and to write it down afterwards as well is much more difficult to maintain than only to give a speech. Everybody knows there is nothing so terrifying as to be reminded of your promise to write down your lecture, especially if only a type-written text, put down from a tape, is at your disposal. You are sure of your remembrance: "That very day I heard applause, there were friendly words and perhaps a state of not ending enthusiasm. And now I receive this type-written text of my speech with a request, full of innocence, of these friendly committee members, "will you be so kind as to prepare your text for publication ']" But this one, is this my text? Unbelievable.