Demarcating Characteristics of Literary Language:

Aesthetic pleasure is one of the primary aims (Nord (1997, p. 82) calls it
the specific effect or function of the literary text).
The language is fictional, that is to say, it does not, or partially, presents
reality. As such, we may differentiate between two types of literary work:
One that is purely fictional (such as fairy tales, fables, and dastan), and
the other that is partially realistic such as the literature created under
the auspices of social realism. The latter claim demands some
explanation. Literature that presents some kind of social reality is normally
branded as a depiction of reality. But, it is important to note that even
such a literary work is not meant to present a ditto copy of reality (as we
may see in historical documents); instead, reality is depicted as it is
perceived (or perhaps better to say, envisioned) by the writer. What we
have on page is basically an artistic admixture of reality and fiction. 1 One
of the obvious manifestations of it comes through when a writer details
what is happening in a characters (who is taken from the real life) mind.
Creative use of language is the hallmark of a literary work (Nord 1997, p.
81); even a work that seemingly comprises simple lexis and structure is no
exception. The creativity may manifest in morpho-syntactic and
lexical/semantic deviations (ibid, p. 81), unusual metaphors (or unusual
use of metaphors), meaningful pattern of grammatical or lexical items,
neologisms, and so on. All this often makes a piece of literature oblique, or
polysemous.2

1 Nord (1997, p. 80) quotes de Beaugrande and Dressler to illustrate this point:
Mimetic reproduction of the world is supplemented by an element of
expressiveness. Expressiveness, as is obvious, refers to a writers individual
expression of something (here, reality).
2 The code elements are often ambiguous, producing the vagueness or
polysemy typical of literary texts (Schmidt 1970a:75ff.) (Nord 1997, p. 85).