Brady Evans Assignment 2A Rhetorical Reflection Section HB McGough October 4, 2013 Trading Up: Where Do Baby Names Come

e From? In the year 2005, writers Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner co-wrote the essay Trading Up: Where Do Baby Names Come From? as part of a book which would appear a year later. The essay, however, was shown to the world on the website Slate.com on April 15, 2005. It provides its readers an interesting perspective on the effect a name has on its owner. Just a few years later, this work was reproduced in the textbook Convergences: Themes, Texts, and Images for Composition. Because of the change in context, the effect of this reproduction is slightly different than the essays original appearance. The first appearance of this essay was on Slate.com. After a short view of this site, it is clear to see that its central purpose is to inform the American people about current events in United States pop-culture and politics. The website is themed more heavily toward the political aspect of the U.S. Also, there is little mention of international issues/politics, so Levitt and Dubner most likely were not concerned with presenting their message to the entire world. It seems that they were more so directing their message to American adults who have interest in keeping up with domestic issues and pop-culture. According to Robert Atwan, author of the textbook Convergences, Steven D. Levitt has centered his career on trying to make sense of certain topics by analyzing the facts of those topics and making a conjecture about them (Atwan 118). The topic he and Stephen J. Dubner are analyzing in this essay is the effect that a name has on a person. By presenting ideas considering the process that various names go through, they attempt to get the readers to understand the effect this process has on the act of naming babies. This ends up creating the message that, because of this process, certain names truly do not have any superior meaning to other names. Reproducing this work in the textbook Convergences, created a slight difference in the works effect. Firstly, the act of presenting the essay in a textbook denotes that it is directed towards students. Placing this as part of a compilation of essays on the same topic, author Robert Atwan was attempting to get students to critically think about what importance a name has on someone if any. He also was most likely trying to obtain different perspectives on this topic so that students may gain their own opinion towards it. Perhaps this might change the way they will decide on a name for their children. Levitt and Dubners essay on the origin and the effect of names originally was intended to cause parents in America to understand the true effect a name has on their kid. The reproduction of this work a few years later in a textbook created a minor difference in the effect it had on its audience. Instead of causing parents to re-think their process of naming kids, the reproduction causes students to critically think about that process and to gain their own perspective on the subject. This effect is definitely important as students are the upcoming generation to decide on what method to use for naming children. Works Cited Atwan, Robert. Convergences: Themes, Texts, and Images for Composition. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2009. Print