What sets off literary works from other narrative display texts is that they have undergone a process of selection: they have been published, reviewed, and reprinted, so that readers approach them with the assurance that others have found them well constructed and 'worth it'.

So for literary works, the cooperative principle is 'hyper-protected'.

We can put up with many obscurities and apparent irrelevancies, without assuming that this makes no sense.

Readers assume that in literature complications of language ultimately have a communicative purpose and, instead of imagining that the speaker or writer is being uncooperative, as they might in other speech contexts, they struggle to interpret elements that flout principles of efficient communication in the interests of some further communicative goal.

'Literature' is an institutional label that gives us reason to expect that the results of our reading efforts will be 'worth it'.

And many of the features of literature follow from the willingness of readers to pay attention, to explore uncertainties, and not immediately ask 'what do you mean by that?'