Non-linguists' perceptions of language in use are generally considered to be strongly influenced by evaluative factors: attitudes, values and ideology. Such a perspective represents a somewhat biased approach to ordinary people's knowledge about language, which is characteristic of both sociolinguistics and its sub-branch, perceptual dialectology. This paper presents an alternative approach, which comprised interviewing 44 Norwegian informants about language spoken locally. The data from the interviews suggests that external (i.e. non-mental) factors play a prominent role in the formation of their perceptions of language. Firstly, observations of language in use seem to be of great importance to that formation, and secondly, the informants' perceptions may be seen in light of the production of knowledge in the local community. Based on the discussion of these findings, a tentative model of the foundations of language perceptions is presented. (Contains 2 figures and 1 note.)