ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses a study of rhetoric that is sensitive to the special character of the social sciences. It examines the field of "alcohol studies" over the past forty years with an eye toward the construction of the audience, the speaker, and the subject of study. The chapter argues the acts of drinking and drunkenness are stripped of any appreciation and the conflicts over the moral and political legitimacy of using alcohol are ignored or converted into justification of moral deviance. It also examines the social construction of the problem of drinking-driving. The chapter points out the several ways in which the research on drinking-driving, through the assumption of malevolence, limits or hides the place of drinking-driving and drunkenness in the everyday lives of many drinkers. It distinguishes three forms of deviance based on the status, or meaning, that both the labelers and the labeled can confer on behavior: The reluctant deviant; The sick deviant; and The enemy deviant.
