ABSTRACT
Propaganda is one kind of attempt to influence attitudes, and hence directly or indirectly the actions of people, by linguistic stimuli, by the written or spoken word. It is specifically contrasted with rational "enlightenment", with the imparting of information from which a person is left to "draw his own conclusions", is thus a mode of influence mainly through "non-rational" mechanisms of behavior. Institutions are patterns governing behavior and social relationships which have become interwoven with a system of common moral sentiments. Clarity and definiteness as well as integration of the different elements on cultural and action levels, are, for a variety of reasons, of very great functional importance for the stability of social systems. Every social system, functionally regarded, faces a control problem on the level of overt behavior. The direct obverse of the functional necessity of integration is the existence of many important tendencies and seeds of deviant behavior.
