<p>Is it possible to have something like a <code>JTextArea</code> which will color some keywords based on some mappings I have ?</p>

I am not sure, because I believe
```
JTextArea
```
only directly supports a single font in a single color.
According to
```
SyntaxHighlighter
```
class
article,
```
JTextPane
```
is the way to go.