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age life expectancy of the population in general were taken into account. The communities of Shaghoor and Dummar are presented as the self-employed life-mode 1, and the career-professionals lifemode 2, respectively. Table 1 shows the distribution of the sample according to age, gender and life-modes. Table 1. Distribution of the speakers according to age, gender and life-mode
Male Female Total
Dummar/life-mode 2
Shaghoor/life-mode 1
Old 5 5
Old 5 5
Middle 5 5
Young 5 5
Middle 4 5
Young 5 5
N 29 30 59
5. The Communities: A Life-mode Approach The ‘life mode’ concept was first proposed as a sociolinguistic analytical tool by L. Milroy and J. Milroy (1992). The Milroys proposed that the concept of life-mode can be used to explain language change in an urban context, being a tool which benefits from integrating the macro tool of class with the microscopic variable of the social network. Introduced by Højrup (1983), and subsequently extended in Højrup (2003), life-mode can be defined as an analytical framework which accounts for cultural and social differences in a society on the basis of the mode of production. The mode of production itself is a structure of both economic and social relations, which can be extended to include ideological, political, legal and social relations. Based on theoretical relations rather than empirical data, the concept is used to describe the class and the ideology specifics of a life-mode. Each life-mode has a set of distinctive class-defining practices that are associated with its mode of production. Of close relevance to these practices are the concept of activity, and the manoeuvring of work and leisure times in terms of mean-end relation. The neighbourhoods of Shaghoor and Dummar are located in two geographically separate areas. Dummar is a relatively newly-built suburb, 6 kilometres towards the western fringe of the city, whereas Shaghoor is an inner-city traditional quarter commonly viewed as the archetype of vintage Damascene lifestyle and architecture. The suburb was originally built by the Damascus Association of the