The article deals with the question of studying such linguistic means as reduplication in English literary prose. The paper contains a definition of the phenomenon as well as several classifications of reduplicatives based on formalstructural, compositional and some other principles. The article states that reduplication can be found in texts of different genres, for instance, in poetic, advertising and journalistic ones. However, it emphasizes that reduplication is significant when a piece of

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... iterary prose is created because it allows to highlight contextually important information and to show the shades of meaning. With the help of a continuous sampling method the examples of reduplicatives were picked from the works of british and american writers of XIX–XXI centuries. They were chosen on the basis of the principle: two or more units of content correspond to one unit of expression. The study contains the analysis of the following: a number of full, partial and divergent reduplicatives, a number of components in a reduplicative, its part of speech and topic, the way it is spelt and if it has any connotation. The results of the research show that in most cases the reduplicatives are nouns that contain two components. Many of them are pejorative. The majority of the reduplicatives are hyphenated as this is the most codified way of their spelling. The topics of the examples under study are quite various. Special attention is paid to author-individual reduplicatives. They make a piece of literary prose unique and help the writer to creatively implement his or her idea. The data prove that reduplication is a popular linguistic means when creating literary prose in English.