The answer is: Literal language is the dictionary meaning; figurative language is a secondary, more emotional meaning.
Literal language is also the conventional and common meaning of a word, or the exact denotation of it.
Figurative language, on the other hand, is more complex. This deviates from conventional meaning, and by using certain rhetorical devices, like metaphors, analogies, or similes, it heightens or deepens the meaning of the word associating, comparing or equating it with unrelated meanings. Since this tends to be a hermeneutic exercise, there certainly is a subjective element to it, so that emotion can in fact play an important role in figurative language.
