Reading: English Varieties and Intelligence

Slate has an article this week titled "Which English You Speak Has Nothing to Do with How Smart You Are." This article takes an intelligent and straightforward look at the problem of stereotype and language:

So why do people think of speakers of standardized English as being smarter, of a higher status, and as having more positive personality traits than speakers of nonstandardized English varieties? These values have more to do with who is in power: If people are devalued for some reason or another—race, gender, socioeconomic class, and so on—their language gets the same association.