Vienna Literary Agreement - Implications and Influence

Implications and Influence

The Vienna Literary Agreement was variously interpreted and referred to throughout the history of Croats, Slovens and Serbs. During the history of the Yugoslavias, especially the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the official doctrine was that the agreement set firm grounds for the final codification of Croatian language and Serbian language that soon followed. With the advent of national standard languages; Bosnian language, Croatian language and Serbian language in the 1990s, criticism emerged on the relevance of the agreement.

For example, according to Malić (1997, p. 30), the event had no critical influence for the Croatian cultural milieu, but has "managed to indicate developmental tendencies that in the formation of Croatian literary language which won by the end of the century". Malić argues that it was only during the 20th century, in the framework of "unitarist language conceptions and language policy", that the meeting has been given critical influence for the formation of common Croatian literary language and Serbian literary language.

Since the agreement was not officially organized, no one was bound by it, and was thus not initially accepted neither by Croatian nor by Serbian press. Croatia still had very live Illyrian language conception, and conservative Serbian cultural milieu was not ready to accept Karadžić's views of folk language of being literary. It was only in 1868 that his reform was accepted in Serbia, and not to the complete extent (Ekavian accent was accepted as standard, rather than Ijekavian), and urban colloquial speech was silently given great influence to form standard language.