Learn English – Etymology of ‘I take your question’ meaning ‘I don’t know’

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In former special council Mueller's testimony before Congress, Mueller used the response "I take your question" a few times when he could not answer. This response isn't heard often and as such news articles had experts explain it.

For example, Quartz had a legal expert in stating:

M. Tia Johnson, a visiting law professor at Georgetown Law School and former assistant secretary for legal affairs at the US Department of Homeland Security, tells Quartz that this is a standard legal response.

“‘I take your question’ is used often when the witness doesn’t know the answer to the question,” she said. It’s distinct from a straight “no” because it indicates that the answer may well be knowable, just that this witness doesn’t know it.

I have searched on Google for this exact phrasing before Mueller's testimony, but the results are slightly different phrasings, for example:

I take your question seriously

I take your question to be (…)

I've also looked at Google Ngram which didn't yield many relevant results either. Many references come from NYMag which has some coverage of the recent Mueller hearing on older pages as well.

My question is about the etymology of "I take your question" as a response explained in the quote from Quartz. What is its origin?

Since there is so little I can find about it on the internet (pre-dating the hearing), I am wondering if anyone can shed some more light on it.

Best Answer

I do not buy the explanation given in the link from the OP states:

"M. Tia Johnson, a visiting law professor at Georgetown Law School and former assistant secretary for legal affairs at the US Department of Homeland Security, tells Quartz that this is a standard legal response. [bolding mine]

“‘I take your question’ is used often when the witness doesn’t know the answer to the question,” she said. It’s distinct from a straight “no” because it indicates that the answer may well be knowable, just that this witness doesn’t know it."

  • I have never heard this phrase used in the way Mueller used it, on its own.
  • "I take your question." here could mean: I hear your question.
  • As far as I'm concerned, it is Mueller's ideolect and non-standard, semantically, in this context.
  • It does not mean the witness doesn't know the answer. On its own, followed by silence, it suggests "I will not answer this question."
  • Special counsels are not usually questioned by Congressional committees.
  • The phrase "standard legal response" merely sounds silly here.
  • A legal response to something would probably mean something in writing, and not speech.

It's a huge stretch to claim that witnesses have "standard legal responses" to questions. Witnesses come in all shapes and sizes and though they may be coached in terms of answering at trials, persons appearing before Congressional committees are also subject to the vagaries of language. Each has her/his own way of speaking, and there is no "standard legal response" by a witness, before Congress or on the witness stand in a trial. Witnesses aren't expected to provide "standard legal responses".

Also, Mueller was a Special Counsel (aka, prosecutor). Generally speaking, prosecutors do not act as witnesses at Congressional hearings. This was an anomaly. In fact, lawyers do not usually take the stand in cases they are involved in.

It is not correct to say Mueller "couldn't answer this or that question", as if he did not have the knowledge to answer it. All the questions he didn't answer were because he chose not to answer them or because he said "I don't know".

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