Idioms: position and move

Esporsi in prima persona is the entry on this list that runs against the rest of it. Everything else here is a picture — a stone laid over an affair, a bar raised, cards turned face up — and this one is not. Esporsi is to expose oneself, to stand where you can be hit, and in prima persona means in your own name, rather than through a spokesman or a committee. The whole expression is abstract, and it is the ordinary way an Italian newspaper says it. English here refuses to be plain. It offers « to stick one’s neck out », from the chopping block; « to put one’s head above the parapet », from the trench; « to go out on a limb », from the branch that will not hold two. All three name a body and a place, and all three carry a warning the Italian does not: they say the speaker expects it to end badly. The neutral renderings — « to take a public position », « to put one’s name to it » — are read like a memorandum. The choice is not between two idioms but between a picture and none.