Unification and Division in Former Yugoslavia through the Prism of the Standard Language Norm
Unification and Division in Former Yugoslavia through the Prism of the Standard Language Norm

Summary/Abstract: This article analyses the role of standard language norms in shaping processes of unification and division in the former Yugoslav space. Tracing developments from the Vienna Literary Agreement (1850) through the Novi Sad Agreement (1954), the language declarations of the late twentieth century, and the Declaration on the Common Language (2017), the study demonstrates that standardization was consistently intertwined with political projects and struggles over national sovereignty. Although grounded in high mutual intelligibility and a shared Shtokavian dialect continuum, attempts to institutionalize a unified literary norm frequently provoked resistance and reinforced competing identity narratives. Incorporating sociolinguistic research on linguistic ecology and minority-language education in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, the article further shows that everyday communicative practice often remains more flexible than formal codification suggests. Minority-language instruction supports identity preservation, while acquisition of the state standard facilitates social integration

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