“The Power of Names” is a New Yorker article written by Adam Alter, an Associate Professor of Marketing at New York University. Adam Alter is an experienced writer with pieces printed in The New York Times, Huffington Post, and Popular Science; furthermore, he achieved his doctorate in Psychology at Princeton University and has conducted research on judgment, decision-making, and social psychology. His article “The Power of Names” is based around how words evoke images and cause people to perceive them in altered states not correlated with their definition. He utilizes several pieces of research throughout his article, including his own, to persuade the readers further. His purpose is to attempt to portray the significance of a name. He reaches…show more content… Alter opens his piece by stating the importance of names but lacks to tell the readers in what context names are important. He proceeds to give the readers multiple scientific examples of why names are important in business, child naming, and word choice; unfortunately, he does not elaborate on any one idea causing readers to feel confused and mislead. For example, in one paragraph Alter speaks of the importance of the perception of north and south in his argument. He provides information which proves how people are more likely to believe it is more difficult to travel north than south because they associate north with up (para 4). This paragraph adequately supports his thesis and proves how names do cause a specific reaction; however, in the following paragraph he proceeds to tell his audience that word choice greatly effects perception. He presents an experiment in which students were asked to watch a series of car accidents and describe what happened based on the questions which were asked. Researchers found that “when the cars were described as having “contacted” one another, the students estimated their speed to be thirty-two miles an hour, whereas another group estimated that the cars were travelling at forty miles an hour when they were described as having “smashed” one another”…show more content… Alter attempts to reach several different audiences such as, businessmen, parents, scientists, and lawyers, in an extremely short paper causing it to seem discombobulated and unorganized. Therefore, his readers will experience confusion and be unable to determine what his actual purpose is. For example, Alter attempts to reach businessmen by stating “an investor who placed a thousand dollars in the ten most fluently named stocks between 1990 and 2004 would have earned a fifteen-per-cent return after just one day of trading, whereas the same thousand dollars invested in the ten least fluently named stocks would have earned a return of only four per cent” proving how important names are when choosing a title for a business (para 6). Only a paragraph later does he proceed on to speak of the importance of a name for a child. As stated before, Alter proclaims that a child’s name will determine where he is ranked within his profession by stating “people prefer politicians with simpler names—and lawyers in American firms with fluent names rise up the legal hierarchy to partnership more quickly than their non-fluently named colleagues” (para 7). In these two paragraphs Alter is reaching two extremely different communities. He hardly focuses on each one individually and glides to the next point so he may capture a larger audience. In addition,
