Demolinguistics, internet and big data

The article reviews the how big data and digital social networks can contribute to demolinguistic research and it explores the pros and cons these new data sources offer. Existing research on the use of languages in SMS, emails, chats, forums, blogs, Wikipedia or Facebook is explored, while the Twitter case is studied in more detail. The sociolinguistic analysis of big data is focused on language choices, an intrinsic goal of demolinguistics, but also to linguistic analysis, such as sentiment analysis, linguistic variation or dialectology. Among the different possibilities using big data for demolinguistic research offers, we highlight the characteristics of analyzing social interactions.