Studying literature and language is vital to understanding life itself. Humans speak with words and gestures, but if we only view them as words and gestures, we will never get anywhere near understanding life or any basic human philosophies.
Once we learn to view words and gestures not only as words and gestures, but as language and literature through classes like the ones mentioned above, we come so much closer to understanding the importance of a glance, a hand motion, etc, and how extremely damaging a single word can be, or even how incredibly uplifting.