decided and – oh dear….”
In this section JK starts to be more relaxed despite her worries about the story being seen. She not only conveys her thoughts verbally, but also uses gestures as she’s keen to share her passion for writing with the interviewer and the audience. Because she is relaxed her language is informal and less controlled, and she uses contracted forms: “….for the book I’m working on at the moment but we don’t wanna go too close on this cos this gives stuff away”. She also has quite long sentences apart from when the interviewer interjects.
Finally in the third section of the ’60 Minutes’ interview, JK seems to be less eager to talk and slightly tired. This is possibly because the interviewer is asking her about her previous, failed marriage and when she was writing her books with a 4-month-old baby and not much money. JK is moody again and slightly bitter as she talks about the past. This shows as she gives short answers and when she does give longer answers she’s not very fluent, “I’d walk around Edinburgh pushing her in the erm push-chair”. Here JK’s tiredness shows as she stammers and repeats herself before struggling for the words “push-chair”.
In the Blue Peter interview, JK is much cheerier as she is surrounded by quite young children on a TV show for kids. JK seems eager to answer questions and communicate with the children. She adapts her language by using simpler words for them, “my four year old if you say what does mummy do he says HARRY POTTER”. Here she uses the word “mummy” as oppose to “mum” or “mother” as it is most likely what her audience would use. She is also more childish in that sentence, imitating her toddler saying “HARRY POTTER” to entertain the children.
In this interview JK also seems to be more fluent when she speaks. This is perhaps because she feels under less pressure than in’60 Minutes’ and is talking about her books more which she is very passionate about. She is also probably trying to make her language easier to understand and explaining things more. For example when she is asked which book she enjoyed writing the most, she replies, “3, 6 and 7 have been the best to write so that’s Azkaban, Half-Blood Prince and Deathly Hallows”. When she says this she clarifies which books she is talking about for the children by saying the names as well as the numbers.
Also in this interview JK communicates para-linguistically a lot more than in ‘60 Minutes’. For example, because she is listening so intently and so keen to answer the children’s questions, she leans forward in her seat. Also, she is always trying to smile. Although at one point she is asked what house David Cameron and Gordon Brown should go in, she leans back and has to think as she wasn’t expecting the question.
Overall, I think that JK adapts her language a lot more in the Blue Peter interview as she has to simplify her language and put on a smile for the children. I also think that her language is slightly less natural in the Blue Peter interview because most of the children’s questions were quite predicable and probably prepared before the show, so JK would have probably known her answers before the interview. However in the ’60 Minutes’ interview, although slightly grim, JK seems to be more natural as she reflects on her past and she almost doesn’t adapt her language at all.
In the ’60 Minutes’ interview, the interviewer has to encourage and prompt JK to answer here questions, especially in the final part of the interview. I will write about how this is done.
In the first section, the interviewer seems to use a couple of techniques to encourage JK to talk. For example, she uses statements such as “ And how cruel the other kids can be” but says it almost as a question, trying to provoke a response. Also, the interviewer doesn’t usually interrupt very much and just lets JK talk a lot and go into detail about her past. The interviewer also uses short sentences, making sure that JK is talking instead of her.
Again in the second section, on the whole, the interviewer allows JK to talk for a long time, knowing that at this point they are discussing something that JK is passionate about and will be eager to talk about: how she writes her books. Apart from the one question “So this is one year?” and when she reassures JK that no-one can see the book, the interviewer doesn’t speak once and lest JK explain about her book.
However, in the third section of ’60 Minutes’, the interviewer is entirely different. At this point JK is reluctant to give away information about the time following her failed marriage, and is slightly begrudging the interviewer. Because of JK’s short answers the interviewer asks many questions to prompt her into answering. The interviewer starts off asking closed questions like “ And write?”, but seeing that she wasn’t getting very good answers, she started to ask open questions, “Why would you come here? What was the point?”. This technique got much better, longer answers. Towards the end, the interviewer reverted to using statements and saying them as questions to prompt a response, “You would come her”.
Overall, although the interviewer tried a few techniques to provoke good response from JK, she quickly realised that the best ones were asking open questions and using statements, but saying them as questions. These techniques encouraged JK into giving long and detailed answers about her past and self- analysis.
