反语特征是反语研究的基础。传统反语论是语义分析,现代经典语用论克服语义分析的局限,把反语研究发展到语用阶段,但两者关于反语的特征描述都仅适用于简单陈述句反语。回声论认为反语是表达特定态度的回声句,它能容纳更多句型和更为复杂的反语案例,但它把部分反语的功能和表达类型普遍化为反语的基本特征,违反定义相称性要求,并且背离人们关于反语的基本直觉。反语和使用反语的表达式不同,在各种反语表达式中,说话者都施行相反的以言行事行为,向听者有意传达相反命题内容或者相反以言行事的力量。

Nature of irony is the basis of irony research. Though the ironical utterance was traditionally for the purpose of semantic analysis, modern pragmatic account of irony relieved the problems of semantic analysis and changed the research into pragmatic stage, but the common failure of both theories was that they applied only to simple declarative sentence irony. Echoic theory proposed that irony was echoic and was designed to convey particular attitudes, that it can accommodate more varieties and more complex irony cases. But it is wrong to generalize the essential characteristic of irony from the function and expression types of some irony, because it does violates the requirement of the definition equality, and also violates the basic intuition about irony. Irony is different from irony expression. In the irony expression, speakers have made the opposite illocutionary acts, contrary propositional content or illocutionary force is communicated to the listeners intentionally.