This point struck me again when I was reading Teaching the Pronunciation of English as a Foreign Language by Robin Walker, which started as a much more balanced and practical view of that area but started to go downhill with the mention of RP. (I later abandoned the book and gave it to a reviewer who made some of the points I would have done).

I’m not a speaker of RP (I speak the universally popular new standard variety called Estuary English) and am no more likely to teach an RP pronunciation of something than I am to point out an American, Scottish or Northern British version, but I do find some of the attacks on it a bit silly. The book unfortunately repeats some of those arguments and so continues the practice. The impression given is that we have been imposing a type of English on our students that is only spoken by 3% of the British population (and therefore a tiny influence on their entire English-speaking population of the world).

Have we really been imposing an accent that is only spoken by 3% of the British population on our students? When I was studying for my (abandoned) MA, Jennifer Jenkins seemed to be defining RP as a plummy, Sloane Square accent. When did you last hear an accent like that in an EFL recording, unless it was supposed to be Agatha Christie style murder mystery or other period piece, or perhaps an unpleasantly arrogant character? And having observed hundreds of teachers and trainee teachers, I have yet to hear one who tried to sound like Henry Higgins when doing a pronunciation spot.

I have noticed teachers putting on a bit of a “telephone voice” in class, though. I would also say that a more modern version of “BBC English” is common in textbooks and (especially) EFL exam recordings. Those are natural things that happen outside the classroom as well, though, hence their names. My own “telephone voice” probably drifts towards RP, just as my street fighting voice drifts towards Cockney, even though I am incapable of doing a decent version of either accent even when mimicking people. That suggests to me that there is an influence of RP that outstrips the population who always speak that way, however we define it. Then there is the continuing (although apparently recently declining) influence on the elites in Commonwealth countries such as India.