Literature is a crucial domain of language life. Literary works not only reflect language life, but also actively shape it. Therefore, literary works should be included as an important subject in language life research. The language life represented in literary works can be analyzed on three levels: textual language life, the language life of the subject, and objective language life. Based on the relationship between the time of creation and the era depicted, literary works can be categorized as recording, retrospective, or reconstructive types, with the research value of the textual language life gradually decreasing across these types. The language life presented in literary works is characterized by concreteness, integrity, and continuity, offering human-centered qualitative data for language study. Research on language life in literary works can use speech acts as basic units, constructing a reduction system across three levels (“micro—meso—macro”), three dimensions (“text—writer—society”), and two perspectives  (“internal—external”). Research in this area not only responds to calls in the literary community, but also aligns with the linguistic tradition of focusing on literature, thus redefining the role of literature in language life. Such research broadens the perspective of language research in the literary community, enriches the resources of language life research, and contributes to the construction of both a history and a high-quality practice of language life. The value of studying language life in literary works deserves further recognition and in-depth exploration.