60 Minutes interview 'Childhood' J K Rowling
J K Rowling interview

In this interview with Rowling, he spoken language throughout is still quite stuttered while she is answering the questions and she takes a little while to think about what she is going to say as she answers, and she uses fillers while answering if she doesn’t know what she actually going to say as her response. For example she says “Erm” a lot as she thinks about what to say. Also she stutters a lot suggesting that she doesn’t actually know what she is about to say, or she is thinking of the best possible answer for the question.

She even contradicts herself in an answer at one point, saying “So when you’re happy, boy are you happy? You’re not-” by saying “boy are you happy” talking about childhood but then she say “You’re not” saying this is contradicting her previous answer and suggesting that childhood isn’t a happy time and it’s not a good time in someone’s life. Also when she says “boy are you happy” she puts emphasis on the ‘boy’ there is even an element of sarcasm in her tone of voice, we know this because she then goes on to contradict herself, like she wasn’t being serious about her answer.
After contradicting her answer she then goes off the point a little bit by saying “You didn’t pay the gas bill” comparing childhood to adulthood; she is kind of saying that as a child you have no worries and don’t need to be responsible, but as an adult there are slot more responsibilities and have to be sensible ‘and pay the bills’.

The interviewer then tries to get Rowling to give more detail in her answer by making a statement of “And how cruel the other kids can be” this isn’t an entirely true statement, it is just said to try to get Rowling to give a bit more detail to her responses, but the interviewer also cute Rowling off with this statement, kind of suggesting the Rowling wasn’t saying what they wanted her to say so they sort of guided her to say what was wanted to be said.
Rowling response to that statement was “They can be vicious and I – I was bullied and erm I hated it erm I had great friends which got me through that no problem.” In this answer she stutters a lot and when saying the word ‘vicious’ she puts lots on emphasis on this word. She says it quite viciously herself, making her answer sound vicious. Her stuttering during this answer suggests that she is quite uncomfortable talking about her childhood; she also uses a lot of fillers (erm), filling in her pauses in her speech so there isn’t any awkward silences between them while she thinks about what to say. Rowling looks at the floor most of the time throughout the interview and when she does look up she doesn’t really make any eye contact with the interviewer.

The interviewer goes on to make another statement “INT: You were an unhappy child.” Again this statement isn’t entirely true; again trying to get Rowling to put more detail into the interview. The interviewer trying to get some information off of Rowling.

In the ’60 minute’ interview of JK Rowling is talking about childhood, she talks to us about who she was and how she behaved when she was young and went to school. She talks to the interviewer about how she was bullied when she was younger and how she who’d find herself ‘going home in tears’ as she says.

After saying this JK Rowling finds herself saying ‘yeah’, not as in the slang way of speaking, but she says it to try and get a reaction out of the interviewer, this way she knows if the interviewer understands what she’s talking about. JK Rowling has to do this because the interviewer speaks few and far between, almost as if to see where JK Rowling takes herself in her own answer. For example the interviewer says ‘you were an unhappy child.’ JK Rowling then finds herself talking about a young boy wait for her with a cricket bat. But at this point JK Rowling realises what has happened and stops herself that’s why she stops the story there so she doesn’t say something that will fault her appearance in any way at all. That is what the interviewer wants to find out about, something that doesn’t seem right for JK Rowling’s figure and reputation. This also happens when she starts to talk but then corrects herself because she might say something she’ll regret, she says ‘I- there’, this shows she had to rethink what she was about to say before she said it.

You can also see that JK Rowling is trying to protect her public image by thinking about what she says as she goes; this is the cause for her hesitations that appear many a time in this interview. This is also the reason for her fillers that she uses.

JK Rowling uses a lot of emphasis, but not without reason, she uses it to highlight key words and sometimes to correct herself. Like at the end she says ‘mine clearly isn’t because it won’t let me erase it!’ she emphasises the ‘mine’ to make her voice be heard over that of the interviewer. She is trying to get her point across because the interviewer has interrupted her and JK Rowling is trying to get her point across without trying to sound aggressive. Although she tries to avoid being aggressive here, she is aggressive at one point, when she says ‘they can be vicious’ she says the ‘vicious’ as if she’s really angry. This shows that maybe something has happened in the past that JK Rowling might either regret or doesn’t want to talk about, almost as if the interviewer has hit a fact that JK Rowling hasn’t thought about for some time now and when the matter is talked about JK Rowling finds herself just letting all her emotions go until she realises what she has already said and she tries to get back to the original subject.

Most of these reactions happen because of what the interviewer says and when she says it, the interviewer doesn’t speak a lot, but when she does she interrupts and talks with a statement, only once does she ask a question. This sort of thing after a time can become pretty annoying, this sort of thing can cause outburst of anger which is actually well controlled by JK Rowling.

In the ’60 Minutes’ interview, JK Rowling is questioned about her childhood. During the start of the interview, she speaks about the bad and good points throughout her childhood.

In the first part of the interview, JK Rowling uses the word “whatsoever” which give us the impression that no matter what, she would never want to go back to her childhood. She then goes on to say “I - I mean erm I wouldn’t go back if you paid me.” This shows that she is hesitating and thinking about how she words things so she doesn’t give more information and thoughts away than necessary and that she has a strong feeling of dislike towards her past.

JK Rowling then ends her answer with the question “you are totally weightless aren’t you?” She does this to try and get the interviewer thinking and to try and get a response that is either an agreement or disagreement. After this she strays from the topic of childhood and compares it to having to pay gas bills but then she tries to get back on topic by thinking of what she says and how she words it. For example, she says “Adults surprise me by appearing to forget how powerless you feel as a child even a happy child-“By wording this how she has, JK Rowling has managed to get back onto the original topic.

Once JK Rowling managed to start getting back onto the topic of childhood, the interviewer interrupts her by saying “And how cruel the other kids can be,” this statement wasn’t positive as afterwards, JK Rowling responds with “They can be vicious.” When she says the word ‘vicious’, she says using a harsh, forceful and angry way.

After this, JK Rowling goes on about how she was bullied as a child and the interviewer then says “You were an unhappy child.” Again, the interviewer interrupts with a statement and not a question which was again a negative comment. At this point, JK Rowling starts thinking carefully of what she says since she is trying not to say anything that may be too personal about her past. This can be shown when she starts off her response to the interviewer with “Not re-no I don’t think I was an unhappy child.” Once she starts explaining again, she ends up changing what she says. “But I – there were times when…” She does this because what she was going to say may have been inappropriate.

Later on in the same statement, she says “yeah” but she is saying it in an understanding, informal and thinking ‘yeah’ and she does this to try and re-assure the person or people who are listening to her. After she says this, she goes on to say about a boy with a cricket bat who used to wait for her on a corner. When talking and thinking about this, she seemed to have been growing more annoyed about it because she says the words “yeah that sounds delightful” in a sarcastic yet angry way. Another thing she says after that to show that she was getting annoyed and was trying to calm down a little bit was when she repeated herself when saying “you must’ve”.

The interviewer then interrupted her thoughts with “But isn’t the human mind a wonderful thing to let you erase that?” JK Rowling then replies with “Mine clearly isn’t because it won’t let me erase it!” She replies to the question in a forceful way to get her point across.