line of questioning
- noun
- During the trial, the lawyer's line of questioning focused on the events leading up to the incident.
- pursue a line of questioning
- continue a line of questioning
Open Book Society Interview pursues a similar line of questioning.
- Open Book Society Interview pursues a similar line of questioning.
- This was in the context of a line of questioning about the Supreme Court's VMI case, which involves sex and gender.
- And then they have such a narrow line of questioning that they're allowed that they'll answer.
- So, so that's the that's a line of questioning that's coming back into that world.
- I do the clown, this aggressive line of questioning.
Examples
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Your Honor, my next line of questioning could take some time.
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Your honor, this line of questioning is vital to the issue of credibility.
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And the nature of reality is such that that line of questioning almost never ends.
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What is the point of this line of questioning?
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You should change your line of questioning.
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We object to this entire line of questioning.
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I need you to help me work out a line of questioning.
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This line of questioning better lead somewhere having to do with this case.
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There are no easy answers to this line of questioning, but clearly, putting theory into practice has not been easy.
Academic text (2012) -
You're not going to get anywhere with that line of questioning.
Fiction book (1991)
Synonyms
A series of questions or investigations to find out about something
A time when someone asks questions to find information
A formal list of questions people ask to test or reveal someone's views
How Probing
Surface Forms
Morphology
line + of + questioning
The phrase is compositionally built: 'line' (a train/sequence) combined with 'questioning' (the act of asking questions) yields the sense 'a sequence/series of questions.' The grammatical 'line of + noun' pattern is common cross-linguistically and the preposition 'of' is merely a linking function, so a B1 learner who knows the parts would readily infer the intended meaning.
Etymology
Line of questioning comes from the image of questions placed like a row or path. A line is a connected row and questioning is asking questions, so the questions lead toward a point and the phrase means 'a series of related questions meant to pursue or support a particular argument'.