Ciecierska-Zajdel, Beata2026-03-062026-03-062025red. Kinga Matuszko, Mikołaj Głos, Obszary Polonistyki 9 / 2025, s. 110-119https://repozytorium.ur.edu.pl/handle/item/12252In recent years, there has been a significant change in the way of realizing the palatality of sibilant consonants [ɕ], [ʑ], [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ]. Soft consonants [ɕ], [ʑ], [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ] are slowly being replaced (especially in the pronunciation of young women) by consonants similar in sound to palatalized dental consonants [sj], [zj], [t͡sj], [d͡zj]. An articulation screening of 770 students of the University of Warsaw confirmed the high frequency of modified implementations of [ɕ], [ʑ], [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ]. However, it also showed that there are various forms of modifying the softness of the mentioned consonants. Soft sibilants [ɕ], [ʑ], [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ] are pronounced by young people in a way not only similar to palatalized dental consonants [sj], [zj], [t͡sj], [d͡zj], but also to dental sibilants [s], [z], [t͡s], [d͡z] or palatalized alveolar sibilants [ʃj], [ʒj], [t͡ʃj], [d͡ʒj]. What is even more interesting, the way of modifying the palatality of sibilant consonants [ɕ], [ʑ], [t͡ɕ], [d͡ʑ] turns out to be strongly correlated with the gender of the respondents. Young women are much more likely to choose variants such as [sj], [zj], [t͡sj], [d͡zj], which are perceptually associated with youth, delicacy, small body size, uncertainty, and subordination, while men choose variants such as [ʃj], [ʒj], [t͡ʃj], [d͡ʒj], which evoke associations with casualness, nonchalance, arrogance, and self-confidence. It turns out that linguistic signals indicating subordination or domination may be contained not only in the semantic layer or in the grammatical and stylistic structure of the text, but also in the phonetic, segmental layer of utterance.polAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/palatal sibilantspronunciation variationsstereotypes in languagewomen’s pronunciationmen’s pronunciationbookPart10.15584/978-83-8277-324-8_10