Big Data, Computer, and Technology in Language Studies: The Potentials of Sketch Engine in Indonesia’s Research

The emergence of the personal computer and internet in the last quarter of the 20th century has triggered the development of corpus linguistic studies that enable researchers to investigate big data in synchronic and diachronic settings. Scholars have developed Corpus tools to provide linguistic analysis features such as word lists, keywords, collocations, and concordances. In 2003, a lexicographer named Adam Kilgariff developed Sketch Engine, which provides more than 700 text corpora in monolingual and multilingual forms and enables users to create their corpus by crawling the data online or uploading the compiled corpus themselves. In the Indonesian context, Sketch Engine has yet to be used widely, even though this tool provides a promising opportunity in language research. This paper discusses 1) the linguistic features available in Sketch Engine, 2) recent language research articles utilizing Sketch Engine, and 3) possible opportunities and barriers for Indonesia’s research. A conceptual and systematic review of corpus linguistics and Sketch Engine is provided to reach the objectives. The analysis found that Indonesian researchers have not contributed yet to the Indonesian corpus development in Sketch Engine. Possible barriers are as follows: 1) the subscription charge, 2) the unfamiliarity of the tool in corpus linguistic publication in Indonesia, and 3) the lack of understanding and application of corpus linguistics in Indonesian academia. Considering Indonesia as a multicultural country, vast opportunities in micro- and macro-linguistic studies will be beneficial to improve the research quality in the Indonesian context.