Stranger in Translation: A Pragmastylistic Approach to David Punter’s Voice in Italian

This article offers a pragmastylistic analysis of the Italian translation of four poems from David Punter’s Stranger, proposing a method that reconceives translation as context-aware reconstruction of stylistic and illocutionary function. The translations, carried out by the author, are examined within a framework that combines close reading with a function-oriented linguistic approach. Drawing on Boase-Beier’s stylistic pragmatics, Snell-Hornby’s integrative model, House’s functionalist equivalence, and Venuti’s critique of translator invisibility, the article analyses Shoreline, Ghost, The Mohs Scale, and New Alphabet with regard to phonological structuring, syntactic disjunction, intertextual cues, and lexical innovation. Each poem poses challenges to semantic and formal equivalence, addressed through strategies prioritizing stylistic integrity and pragmatic relevance. The analysis shows that fidelity in poetry translation relies on functional correspondence rather than formal imitation, preserving illocutionary force and communicative impact. This model casts the translator as an agent navigating linguistic and cultural asymmetries, offering a linguistically grounded, rhetorically aware method that reinforces the ties between pragmatics, stylistics, and literary translation.