This dissertation presents studies of a socially highly relevant text category, local radio broadcasts. The language of news programmes in particular from three local radio stations - Radio Gotland, Radio Väs­terbotten and Radio Östergötland - has been studied in the light of the intentions behind the introduction of local radio, and the ambitions expressed by the radio people involved. Different factors for analysis and description of local radio language are presented and used in an empirical study of broadcasts from the three stations. Both regional and national variations and differences are taken into consideration. Language and context are analyzed on separate levels: complete news texts, sentences and clauses, words and phonemes. The methods vary from a pragmatic text-typology analysis to a syntactic study based on modern spoken language research. Particular consideration is given to the aspect of local radio language that establishes contact with listeners - greetings, forms of address, and studio talk between items. A receiver-oriented perspective is used to interpret the results - the concept communicative distance, that is to say the distance between the listener and the medium that she/he feels there is on the basis of the language used in the programmes. A demonstrable pattern has been found in the relations between extra- and intra-linguistic factors and what in this study is termed the communicative distance. Compared with that of national radio, the commuicative distance of local radio language tends to be somewhat less. Of the three local radio stations Radio Gotland tends to have the least and Radio Västerbotten the greatest. The book concludes with three perspectives on further research. / digitalisering@umu