Grammarly’s Tone Detector: Helping Students Write Pragmatically Appropriate Texts
Abstract
Grammarly’s Tone Detector is included in the free version of the application and is available for major phone and computer program platforms. Its strength is in helping students compose pragmatically appropriate texts which could substantially increase their confidence and the feeling of autonomy. It accomplishes this by providing writers with tone indications of their text paired with emojis to help navigate the sometimes opaque waters of pragmatics. However, this tool does not provide indications of which words or phrases contribute to an indicated tone, nor does it offer suggestions for improvement. It is a perpetual beta tool in that it asks for user input to continually adapt and learn to the changing communicative situation. Although there are some areas for improvement, it is a useful tool that teachers could recommend to their students to support their ability to raise their confidence about the pragmatic appropriateness when writing emails and other texts where pragmatics are important.
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Electronic messages tend to "get to the point" with fewer potentially distracting phrases, and can include real-time feedback on responses drafted by the individual with autism.
“Not only do electronic messages tend to “get to the point” with fewer potentially distracting phrases, but they can also include real-time feedback on the responses drafted by the individual with autism [31].”
From Remote work support needs of employees with autism spectrum disorder in Poland: perspectives of individuals with autism and their coworkers (2022) · cites this paper as [31]
Cites
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Zhao, X. (2023) · RELC Journal · doi:10.1177/00336882221094089 · Cited by 192 · see citing works
Mahmud, F. A. (2023) · Journal of Language Teaching and Research · doi:10.17507/jltr.1405.28 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
Bhat, A., Agashe, S., Oberoi, P., Mohile, N., Jangir, R., & Joshi, A. (2023) · Proceedings of the 28th International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces · doi:10.1145/3581641.3584060 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
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- Authors
- Winans, M. D.
- Affiliations
- Arizona State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Winans, Michael D.
- ORCID
- Winans, Michael D.
- Venue
- RELC Journal
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2021-07-07
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 348-352
- ISSN
- 0033-6882 (ISSN-L)
- 1745-526X
- OpenAlex
- W3179973849
- Cited by
- 20
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 6 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 1
- FWCI
- 2.30
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- RELC Journal (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Digital Communication and Language
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › Linguistics and Language Analysis
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Literature and Literary Theory › Discourse Analysis in Language Studies
- Keywords
- Grammarly, tone detection, pragmatics, student writing, writing confidence, learner autonomy, email writing, writing support tools
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