"Rhetoric, The Enabling Discipline." Corbett, Edward P.J. The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook.

Corbett writes about the theory and practic of rhetoric's "remarkable adaptability ... to the changing spirit and needs of the times" (26). New modes of discourse seem to gain popularity in accordance to the needs of our society, our worlds, and ever-changing decisions about how it is best to communicate.

Corbett looks to Moffett's model of the triadic relationship in communication: the "I", the "it", and the "you", as well as Kinneavy's "triple set": encoder (speaker), signal (the message), and decoder (listener) to try to show how rhetoric has changed. For example, he believes that emphasis on the speaker is expressive discourse, the emphasis on the message might be literary discourse, and the emphasis on the listener is persuasive discourse (27). Writers should learn to write with all of these emphases, deciding which message is most appropriate to the aim of the message. I think writing teachers, with the increasing demands to teach students to write only academically, should keep in mind that students need to learn to communicate for other audiences, and that hte voice changes in accordance.