BECK SINAR

Profile

Biography

BA Linguistics with Literature, MA Syntax and Semantics, PhD Historical Linguistic Variation and Change (York); SFHEA

Beck specialises in contemporary and historical Linguistic Variation and Change. Her interests are many and varied, including:

• History of English & Language Contact: morphological and syntactic change in medieval Germanic Languages (especially Old and Middle English) and the interactions between these languages and other languages used in medieval Britain and Ireland.
• Comparative Germanic Linguistics: using contemporary parallel corpora to conduct comparative studies across English and other Germanic languages, particularly Norwegian.
• Sociolinguistics & Pragmatics: language, culture, and identity in the North of England and Scotland, as well as (im)politeness in the UK and Scandinavia.
• Pop Culture Linguistics: the intersection of modern linguistics, media, and contemporary popular culture.

Departmental Roles

Sustainability Champion / Green Impact Lead

External Activity

Beck is a member of the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies.

External Examiner: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), The Western University of Applied Science (HVL) and The University of Oslo (UiO)

Research Groups: English Language and Corpus Linguistics at the University of Oslo (UiO), Language Data and Language Change (LDLC) at the University of Bergen (UiB), Discourse of Gender and Sexuality (DoGs) at the Western University of Applied Science (HVL) , English language in Use (ELiU) at the University of Inland Norway (INN)

Chair of the York-Anglo Scandinavian Society (2024 onwards)

Executive Committee for the Confederation of Scandinavian Societies (2025 onwards)

Research

Overview

Over the last two years, publications have centered on two primary themes: innovative methods for teaching linguistic variation and change, and the sociolinguistics of Bollywood.

Current projects

• Old English Reflexives & Intensifiers
  Applying formal syntactic analysis, statistical modeling, and corpus linguistics techniques to study reflexives and intensifiers in the Lemmatised YCOE (York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English).
• Comparative Intensifiers in English & Norwegian (with Torodd Kinn, University of Bergen)
  Investigating the usage and syntax of the intensifier self across English and Norwegian using the Oslo Multilingual Corpus.
• Critical Language Awareness in Urban Landscapes (with Dr. Lalita Murty, Christ University)
  Co-authoring "Signs of the Times: Critical Language Awareness through Urban Linguistic Landscapes" for a special issue of the Nordic Journal of Language Teaching and Learning (NJLTL) on the educational values of linguistic research.

Publications

• Sinar, B. (2026). Bruh: A global sigh-n of the times  Anglo Files Journal of English Teaching 220 pp. 42-46
• ​Cowie, C., L. Murty & B. Sinar (in press). 'The Sociolinguistics of Bollywood' in Handbook of Language and Pop Culture​ from Mouton de Gruyter's Handbooks of Applied Linguistics​ Series
• Sinar, B. (2025). World of Memecraft: Memes and the War in Ukraine Anglo Files Journal of English Teaching 216 pp. 59-66
• Cowie, C., Murty, L. and Sinar, B. (2025). ‘Decoding Bollywood: why Hindi–English code-switching and standard English outrank Indian English’, English Language and Linguistics, 28(4), pp. 683–708. ​https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674324000534
• Sinar, B. (2025).  'British English with nowt tekken out? Including the voices of northern England in the classroom' Anglo Files Journal of English Teaching 215 pp. 34-40

Teaching

Short Course

Beck’s Short Course offerings focus on aspects of language variation and change using different types of corpus data.  In 2026-2027 options include:

• Norse Code: Viking York and its linguistic afterlife
• Trick or Talk: Accents, Attitudes, and Allegiances
• Luv or Bruv? Shifting Identities and Social Belonging in York 
• Pretty Please: Politeness in Englishes
• The Power of Metaphor
• Global Voices, Local Streets: Multilingualism in Modern York

YorkCourse

Beck’s YorkCourse module is called "History of English: York’s Tale". It challenges the conventional focus on Standard Southern British English, using the rich, non-standard linguistic heritage and historic landscape of York as an immersive case study for English language evolution from Old English to the Present-Day. 

Beck also teaches on the interdisciplinary module "Food, Glorious Food", where amongst other things she considers dialectal terms for bread rolls and the indexicality of fried chicken.