Digital Linguistics in the Age of AI: Corpus Technologies, Multimodality, and the Transformation of Linguistic Inquiry

Abstract

This study examines the transformative effects of digital and AI-driven technologies on contemporary linguistic research and pedagogy. It investigates how emerging computational tools reshape data collection, linguistic analysis, theory development, and digitally mediated communication while examining their methodological, epistemological, and ethical implications. A qualitative integrative review combining systematic review principles with critical narrative synthesis was employed. Literature published between 2014 and 2024 was retrieved from Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) proceedings, and Language Resources and Evaluation Conference (LREC) databases. Of 420 identified publications, 138 studies met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed according to linguistic subfields, methodological orientations, technological focuses, and analytical functions. The findings demonstrate that AI-driven and digital tools have substantially reshaped linguistic research, with corpus linguistics and computational linguistics accounting for 44 % ( n  = 61) of the reviewed studies and 52 % ( n  = 72) employing corpus-based or natural language processing (NLP)-driven approaches. Digital corpora, multimodal datasets, and online communication environments expanded research possibilities, with 42 % ( n  = 58) of the total reviewed corpus ( N  = 138) reporting the use of social media and digitally mediated datasets, particularly in sociolinguistic and discourse-oriented research. At the same time, 41 % ( n  = 30) of NLP-oriented studies reported concerns related to algorithmic bias, interpretive opacity, linguistic inequality, and overreliance on predictive performance, highlighting the ethical challenges associated with AI-assisted linguistic research. Digital technologies have transformed linguistic inquiry by expanding its methodological and empirical scope while simultaneously reshaping theoretical perspectives and research practices. Their responsible integration requires theoretically informed, ethically grounded, and interdisciplinary approaches that promote transparency, inclusivity, and accountability in future digital linguistic research.