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The Analects, a collection of sayings and discussions by Confucius and his disciples, is considered as the major classics of Confucianism and Chinese culture.It has been proved to be very successful and influential.However, little work has ever been done in investigating the discursive and rhetorical elements of the text of The Analects and the ways it typically seeks to create a positive perception of Confucius and Confucianism.This paper examines some critical features of text-level rhetoric to determine how Confucius and Confucianism are projected into the text in order to present an effective picture.Based on the Appraisal theory developed in systemic-functional linguistics for studying interpersonal meaning, this paper focuses on the role of the kinds of attitude constructed and features of attitudinal resources in the text.Drawing on a detailed analysis of 10 sample texts, the paper explores the ways in which attitudinal resources work as an indicator of rhetorical identification in The Analects.The study has yielded some interesting results: all the selected samples have attitudinal resources though the three attitude values affect, judgment and appreciation are not equally distributed.There are more resources ofjudgrnent in the samples, which is up to 57% of the total, and the occurrences of affect and appreciation are close in frequency.The qualitative analysis of the corpus demonstrates how features of attitudes are used to create a positive Confucian image and thus achieve rhetorical identification.The study provides a strong argument for the need to study varieties of attitudes as a component of rhetoric and suggests that those interested in the study of TheAnalects need to become more aware of how aspects of the appraisal system is used to accomplish rhetorical goals.