diff --git a/docs/api-guide/serializers.md b/docs/api-guide/serializers.md
index 40f8a1705..50505d30d 100644
--- a/docs/api-guide/serializers.md
+++ b/docs/api-guide/serializers.md
@@ -78,7 +78,7 @@ When deserializing data, you always need to call `is_valid()` before attempting
 
 ### Field-level validation
 
-You can specify custom field-level validation by adding `validate_<fieldname>()` methods to your `Serializer` subclass. These are analagous to `clean_<fieldname>` methods on Django forms, but accept slightly different arguments. They take a dictionary of deserialized data as a first argument, and the field name in that data as a second argument (which will be either the name of the field or the value of the `source` argument to the field, if one was provided). Your `validate_<fieldname>` methods should either just return the data dictionary or raise a `ValidationError`. For example:
+You can specify custom field-level validation by adding `validate_<fieldname>()` methods to your `Serializer` subclass. These are analagous to `clean_<fieldname>` methods on Django forms, but accept slightly different arguments. They take a dictionary of deserialized attributes as a first argument, and the field name in that dictionary as a second argument (which will be either the name of the field or the value of the `source` argument to the field, if one was provided). Your `validate_<fieldname>` methods should either just return the attrs dictionary or raise a `ValidationError`. For example:
 
     from rest_framework import serializers
 
@@ -86,14 +86,14 @@ You can specify custom field-level validation by adding `validate_<fieldname>()`
         title = serializers.CharField(max_length=100)
         content = serializers.CharField()
 
-        def validate_title(self, data, source):
+        def validate_title(self, attrs, source):
             """
             Check that the blog post is about Django
             """
-            value = data[source]
+            value = attrs[source]
             if "Django" not in value:
                 raise serializers.ValidationError("Blog post is not about Django")
-            return data
+            return attrs
 
 ### Final cross-field validation
 
diff --git a/rest_framework/serializers.py b/rest_framework/serializers.py
index 15fe26eeb..2f8108d13 100644
--- a/rest_framework/serializers.py
+++ b/rest_framework/serializers.py
@@ -208,24 +208,24 @@ class BaseSerializer(Field):
 
         return reverted_data
 
-    def clean_fields(self, data):
+    def validate_fields(self, attrs):
         """
         Run validate_<fieldname> methods on the serializer
         """
-        fields = self.get_fields(serialize=False, data=data, nested=self.opts.nested)
+        fields = self.get_fields(serialize=False, data=attrs, nested=self.opts.nested)
 
         for field_name, field in fields.items():
             try:
                 clean_method = getattr(self, 'validate_%s' % field_name, None)
                 if clean_method:
                     source = field.source or field_name
-                    data = clean_method(data, source)
+                    attrs = clean_method(attrs, source)
             except ValidationError as err:
                 self._errors[field_name] = self._errors.get(field_name, []) + list(err.messages)
 
-        return data
+        return attrs
 
-    def clean_all(self, attrs):
+    def validate_all(self, attrs):
         """
         Run the `validate` method on the serializer, if it exists
         """
@@ -270,10 +270,10 @@ class BaseSerializer(Field):
         self._errors = {}
         if data is not None:
             attrs = self.restore_fields(data)
-            attrs = self.clean_fields(attrs)
-            attrs = self.clean_all(attrs)
+            attrs = self.validate_fields(attrs)
+            attrs = self.validate_all(attrs)
         else:
-            self._errors['non_field_errors'] = 'No input provided'
+            self._errors['non_field_errors'] = ['No input provided']
 
         if not self._errors:
             return self.restore_object(attrs, instance=getattr(self, 'object', None))