A critical analysis of the biography of Nick Vujicic with specific reference to linguistic and structural features

A critical analysis of the biography of Nick Vujicic with specific reference to linguistic and structural features


Nick Vujicic is travelling the world holding motivational- and inspirational speeches in schools, churches and so on. He was born without limbs, and despite his struggles he has been able to cope with this major disability and has become a cultural icon or inspiration to others. I am going to study his biography which provides information about him told in the third person. It is written in a formal style with a serious tone. This accentuates that the audience is people who are interested in learning more about Nick Vujicic, which we can presume (because of his story) are students, teachers, leaders in Christian churches, people with disabilities or other obstacles in life.

In the introduction of the biography interrogative sentence structures are used. “What would you do? How would that affect your everyday life?” This creates a sense of inclusion and engages the reader as he/she is addressed with the second person pronoun “you”. Interrogatives are also used to make the text more dramatic or to influence the reader more. “How would their son live a normal, happy life? What could he ever do or become when living with what the world would consider such a massive disability?” Rhetorical questions like these are used to provoke a thought process in the reader. 

The language used in the biography is emotive, and cohesion can be seen in the lexis used as they are all in the lexical field of motivational speaking or the body, as Vujicic doesn’t have any arms or legs. When looking specifically at grammar the verbs used are associated with positivity (to inspire, to motivate, to realize, to be able to, to accomplish, to overcome), while the nouns are more negative (disability, depression, loneliness, frustration, struggle, problems, failure). In terms of adjectives many of them are superlatives, such as most powerful, biggest, and most effective. They also tend to be attributive (pre-modifying), for example limbless son, happy life, massive disability, amazing ability, and biggest dreams. This enhances the fact that even the biggest obstacles can be surmounted, and it influences the reader more.


Furthermore the text is grammatically cohesive as we can find anaphoric references and conjunctions. The conjunction and is the most important cohesive devise used, and makes the discourse flow more smoothly. Without conjunctions the discourse would seem disjointed. In addition to these grammatical features, modal auxiliary verbs are also used to emphasize the utterances, especially in the interrogative utterances in the introduction where ‘could’ and ‘would’ are used. This suggests the tenor of his message as being enquiring.

The text has a standard structure for a biography or Bildungsroman and the tense change is reflective of his past life and continuing present. It starts with an introduction, where Nick Vujicic is presented, and a direct request to the reader. It continues by telling about Vujicic’s childhood and his struggles and obstacles whilst growing up. This is told in the past tense. Further on the biography relates details, using the present continuous, about his years of studying, and it concludes by telling about his life now and his work, using the present tense and the present continuous. It is structured in this way in order to let us follow Vujicic’s life in a chronological order, which also contributes to make the text cohesive.


English Language Coursework Year 12 - Julie Egeland, 2012
Written text analysis