David Batty's approach on how accents within a language can change one's perception of a person allows for an interesting, modern point of view. His message essentially expresses how accents, particularly in England, allow someone to determine another's intelligence. In fact, "dialect and perceived intelligence found that people who said nothing at all were regarded as more intelligent than those with a Brummie accent". This whole assumption relates to the area which the accent originates from and its socioeconomic status. Wealthier individuals usually invest in higher education and those were deemed to have more "intelligent" accents. As university education becomes the norm, this assumption of accents can become distorted as those with a "Brummie accent" may in fact be subject to the same education as those with a Yorkshire accent.
This article takes a similar approach to Bill Bryson's Good English and Bad, as it differentiates English dialects due to one's level of education. Those who have better opportunities for education are more aware of grammatical rules allowing them to adapt a "better", more proper English. On the flip side, Batty seems to believe that accents and education evolve along with the "proper" ways of speech, while Bryson's take is that "The best forms of speech will, in time, establish themselves". Interestingly, both authors take different stances at the evolution of a proper way of speaking.
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