Standard dialects have a distinct  grammar, lexis and pronunciation.

Standard English refers to a style of language used to suit a setting where the audience is large, not personally known, or in authority.

Non standard English is perceived as official and an appropriate choice of  style in media writing and by teachers, the education system.

Speakers from upper classes tend to use nonstandard dialect features more excessively.

Received Pronunciation is a social dialect, not a geographical one, because it is  not linked to a particular region.

Nonstandard English is still referred to and spoken by British people who have a very high,   perhaps even the highest, social status. 

Standard English is  the accents, the dialects, the vocabulary that vary according to where you live, or what social group you are in. 

The use of nonstandard dialect words, grammar and pronunciation decreases the longer an individual spends in education.

Nonstandard dialects are often wrongly perceived as being correct but linguists persistently stress that Standard English is in no form superior to any spoken dialect.

Speed of speaking.

Break between phonation pieces.

Regular, repeated pattern of sounds or movements. 

Variations in the pitch of the voice in the connected speech.

Periodic recurrence of rhythmic units of different size and level.

Relative degree of prominence given to various words in an utterance.

Sound changes produced by the rise and fall of the voice when speaking. 

Considered as rhythmical, and that the rhythm is detectable in the regular occurrence of  stressed syllables.

Tonal colouring of the speaker’s voice which helps to convey some meaning.

Unity of speech melody, timbre, utterance stress, temporal characteristics and rhythm.