It is important to talk about how we change people’s minds and how ideas are spread in English, that is, propaganda words in English. This is a common topic for natives, and learners of English should know why natives chose the words they did.
Promote: to contribute to the popularity of something
This means you try to make an idea more popular. It does not matter if you created the idea, or someone else created the idea.
That politician promotes a dangerous myth.
= That politician publicly encourages people to believe this lie.
The singer appeared on the talk show to promote his new music album.
= The singer wanted to tell the audience to buy his music.
Perpetuate: to try to continue the existence of an idea
This means you participate in the continuation of this thought. If you didn’t say it, the idea would disappear. The fact that you even said the idea means you perpetuated it. Sometimes it can be unintentional. Usually, it has a negative meaning.
When you say that all women should have children, you perpetuate the idea that women should not work.
= Saying one thing made another idea continue.
You are perpetuating harmful stereotypes when you make jokes like that.
= When you said that joke, you made a bad idea continue in the world.
Push (onto somebody): to urge somebody to think a certain way
This is close to promote, but it has a nuance of force and secret techniques to change minds.
That politician always pushes crazy ideas about different groups of people.
= That politician uses many opportunities to spread his ideas dogmatically.
I don’t think you should push that idea onto children.
= It is bad to spread that idea to children like it is fact.
Popularize: to show something in a way that makes it likeable, which results in popularity
This is the softest word on this list. The idea existed before your actions, but you changed it so that many people knew about the idea or started to like it. Usually, this is about the first person who made many people know this idea, so probably it was a celebrity.
Jeans were popularized in the 1950s by movie stars like James Dean, but they were invented in 1871.
= The creation and the widespread use were far apart. The moment when they became widely common was the 1950s.
Immigrants helped popularize Chinese food in America.
= The origin of the popularity of Chinese food was immigrants.
Propagandize: to spread an idea that is supposed to change people’s thoughts
This word is the most emotional and sounds the most authoritarian and scary to native English speakers. This verb is about spreading an idea, but the person probably did not originate the idea.
The television propagandized for the government so often that some people stopped believing everything that came from the television.
= The television spread so many political messages, which made people lose trust.
I hate her because she just goes onto every popular talk show to propagandize for her party.
= Her only purpose is to spread her party’s ideas so that people change their minds.
In summary:
- promote: to continue to the popularity of something
- perpetuate: to continue the existence of something
- push: to tell people they should do something
- popularize: to trigger the explosion of popularity of something
- propagandize: to spread ideas with the intention of changing minds
If you are interested in society or politics, you will encounter these propaganda words in English, and they are used in particular contexts with intention. Be careful how you use them because you might give the wrong emotion to your sentence if you use the wrong one.
If you want to learn more English, I have many other English explanations on my website. If you want to watch content related to language learning, I have a YouTube channel with many videos on the topic.
Promote English and keep on learning it!
