RP: Received Pronunciation

VIDEO: The RP English Accent – What is it, how does it sound, and who uses it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcIX-U5w5Ws

RP: concerned to pronunciation only, so how words are pronounced. It’s rooted on standard English.
Standard English is a variety, it’s related to grammar, syntax… the all system.
RP is related only to the way words are pronounced, you cannot say where a person comes from or not.
RP has no regional features, it became very powerful.
At the same time all other varieties and accents were discriminated because they’re not powerful.
Where you came from maybe it can be not prestigious, but if you speak RP, people won’t know where you are from.

English shaped by contact
English is characterized by diversity
What is particularly interesting in the context of the change that English began to undergo in the Early Modern period is the fact that as norms and ideologies of ‘correctness’ in language use were explicitly beginning to take shape and to be perceived as important in the evolution of an intellectually progressive and increasingly powerful nation (i.e. Britain), the non-standard everyday use of socially ordinary English speakers was taking root in the colonies; and indeed, laying the foundations for the new directions of change the language would follow (Sigh, 2005).

"The stories of English" by David Crystal
In fact, the book has two introductions, because there are 2 stories to be told.
On p. 3 there is an outline if the history of English, as often recounted. The past century has seen dozens of books which have presented the language in such terms, describing stages in the emergence of what has come to be called ‘Standard English’. A standard is a variety of a language which has acquired special prestige within a community. It is an important focus of study, and one which will be routinely encountered as the chronology of the present book unfolds. But an account of the standard language is only a small part of the whole story of English. The real story is much, much bigger.
Accordingly, beginning on p. 5 there is an introduction to this real story, which is what this book is largely about.
Real stories will be more accurate, for in the history of something as multifaced as a language, there are always several trends taking place simultaneously. A richness of diversity exists everywhere and always has, over the language’s 1500-year history, but the story of Standard English has hitherto attracted all the attention. The other stories have never been given the rightful place in English linguistic history, and it is time they were.