Literary language is used by writers to convey an idea, but more beautiful and aesthetic to capture the reader’s attention. Depending on the structure and content, literary language can be found in lyrical, narrative, dramatic and didactic essay genres.
This type of language can be used in prose or verse. Likewise, it can also be verbal and used in everyday communication. Literary language is a special language, insofar as it prioritizes the way of conveying the message and not the message itself.
It is obvious that a literary message stripped of its form loses or changes its meaning, loses its connotative potential and, with it, its literary character. Using this mode of expression inexorably involves creative activity.
The use of this dialect of the language used to be very popular in the Middle Ages to create a dramatic effect. Therefore, it is very present in the liturgical scriptures. Nowadays it is frequent to find it in poetry, poems and songs.
Literary language is malleable enough to interfere with other non-literary writings, such as memoirs and newspaper articles.
Characteristics of literary language
1- Originality
Literary language is an act of conscious creation, in which the writer can have the freedom to write in an original and unpublished way, considering the proper meaning he assigns to words and, thus, moving away from ordinary language.
2- Artistic will
The ultimate intention of what is written is to create a work of art, that is, that through words they convey beauty. The style and way of saying the message are privileged over the content itself.
3- Special communicative intention
Language is a vehicle of communication and it is what gives it meaning. Therefore, literary language has a communicative intent, which is to communicate literary beauty above a practical purpose.
4- Connotative or subjective language
Covering the originality and fiction characteristic of literary language, the writer is sovereign in giving meaning to the words he wants and in his polyvalent speech and in multiple meanings (unlike a technical or non-literary text), that is, in multiple meanings. . In this way, each receiver will have a different assimilation.
5- Use of fiction
The message creates fictional realities that need not correspond to external reality. The writer can be very versatile and transport the reader to other dimensions almost identical to real life, but, after all, unreal.
This fictional world is the result of the author’s particular vision of reality, but, at the same time, it generates in the receiver some of his own life experiences that specify the horizon of expectations with which a text approaches.
5- Importance of form
The relevance of form in literary language leads the writer to take care of the “texture” of language as such, such as the careful selection of words, their order, musicality, syntactic and lexical construction, etc.
6- poetic function
Seeking an aesthetic goal, literary language takes advantage of all the expressive possibilities available (phonic, morphosyntactic and lexical) to produce curiosity and attention on the part of the reader.
7- Use of rhetorical or literary figures
Here we will understand <<figure>>, in its broadest sense, any type of resource or manipulation of language for persuasive, expressive or aesthetic purposes.
Rhetorical figures are ways of using words in an unconventional way to surprise the reader and give more meaning to the text. Of these resources, we find a wide variety in two main categories: diction and thinking.
8- Appearance in prose or verse
It is chosen based on the author’s needs and the chosen genre. Literary language can be present in both forms of language: prose or verse.
In prose, which is the natural structure that language assumes, we enjoy it in fables, stories, and novels. It serves to enrich the description of the texts.
In the case of verse, its composition is more careful and demanding, because lyrical works measure the number of syllables (measure), the rhythmic accents in the verses (rhythm) and the relationship between the verses and the rhyme (stanzas).
We can appreciate this form in poems, poetry, hymns, songs, odes, elegies or sonnets.
Elements that participate in literary communication
These are the aspects that constitute the general process of communication, but they operate differently when it comes to literary communication.
1- Issuer
It is the agent that tries to generate emotions or stimulate the imagination, a more sensorial message in relation to the sender of the communication that focuses on the content.
2- Receiver
It is he who receives the message. He is not a specific person, but a hypothesis demanded by the text itself.
Let us remember that literary language is an expression of artistic communication and, without the assumption that “someone” will receive the message (even if sensorial) that the author wants to convey, it would lose its meaning.
3- Channel
It is the means by which the literary message is communicated. It is normally written, although it can be verbal when a poem is recited, a monologue is told or sung.
4- Context
Context generally refers to the temporal, spatial, and sociocultural circumstances in which the message is circumscribed, but in the case of literary language, the writer’s freedom to give free rein to his imagination causes the context of the literary work (in fact, the of any literary work) is itself.
5- Code
It is the signs that will be used to convey the message, but in this case they are not used in the same way, as there is no univocal interpretation of the text, but the multiple meaning explained.
Examples of literary language
Here are some examples of literary language in different narrative genres.
Romance
Excerpt from the work No news from Gurb (1991) by Eduardo Mendoza:
The alien spaceship lands on Sardanyola. One of the aliens, who calls himself Gurb, takes the bodily form of a human individual named Marta Sánchez. A professor at the University of Bellaterra puts him in his car. Gurb disappears, while the other alien tries to find his mate and begins to get used to the body shapes and habits that humans have. The search for Gurb has just begun, an alien lost in the urban jungle of Barcelona ».
Poem
Extract from Rhymes and Legends (1871) by Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
“I swim in the void of the sun / I tremble at the stake / I throb in the shadows / and I float with the mist”.
History
Excerpt from Rapunzel (1812) by the Brothers Grimm.
And at dusk he climbed over the wall of the witch’s garden, hastily plucked up a handful of green grass, and took them to his wife. She immediately made a salad and ate much to his liking; and he liked them so much that the next day his desire was three times as intense. If she wanted to enjoy the peace, her husband had to jump back into the garden. And so he did, at dusk. But as soon as he set foot on the ground, he got off to a terrible start, for he saw the witch rise before him.
