Perceptual dialectology is the study of how nonlinguists perceive variation in language—where they believe it exists, where they believe it comes from, and how they believe it functions. Perceptual dialectology differs from standard dialectology in that it is concerned not with formal linguistic differences among dialects, but rather with how nonlinguists perceive them (which may or may not correlate with scientific linguistic findings). Because it focuses on nonlinguists' views of linguistic concepts, perceptual dialectology is considered a subset of the study of folk linguistics, as well as part of the general field of sociolinguistics.