Résumé : Previous research has shown that deficits in the domain of emotions strongly characterize alcoholism. Patients diagnosed with alcoholism show impairments in emotional mimic recognition, as well as in the domain of emotional prosody. These data suggest that male alcoholics might suffer from a generalized emotional impairment associated with dysfunctions in empathy. Taken altogether, those deficits might influence alcoholics' relational domain and their performance in complex communicative situations such as ironic interactions. The present study investigates the ability of chronic male alcoholics to recognize the emotional component of ironic contexts and its relation to the comprehension of ironic meaning as a function of their empathic abilities.