I've heard the じょう being pronounced as some kind of voiceless fricative in
multiple works of entertainment, especially in the case of 激情. Is it some kind
of remnant phoneme from old Japanese or is it just an artistic stylization?
I'm pretty sure it doesn't appear in the modern standard phonology, or does
it?

_Examples on YouTube_

  * [Example 1](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ur4BkAkR71w&t=2m7s "Example")

  * [Example 2](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3rPyU5VPkc&t=2m13s "Example2")
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2016-02-04T10:51:10.010
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2016-04-22T21:21:58.930
2016-02-04T14:07:57.180
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pronunciation phonology
激情 and its pronunciation
If you loosen your throat, じょう might turn to しょう as you say. But that has
nothing to do with one's style.

edit: じょう as in げきじょう is not easy to deeply pronounce (in fact, しょう as in
えきしょう is sharply pronounced with the vowel in き skipped) and it could be
physically closer to しょう as in, say, あいしょう rather than average じょう.
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2016-02-05T00:57:52.247
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I can't really make sense of those videos as げきしょう. (Not an English native
speaker, if that may be related.)

That's how the word (and the sequence of phonems, as noted by (user4092) reads
in regular speech, not just in songs.
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2016-03-22T16:22:59.000
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激情 should never be pronounced with voiceless fricative like "shou" as you say.
If you mouth it "gekishou," it turns out to be 激賞 meaning "high praise," or 劇症
meaning an acute symptom of disease, like fulminant hepatitis.

情 either as its own, or in combined-form like 情熱 (passion)、情緒 (emotion)、熱情
(ardor), 情実 (personal considerations /motives)、情趣 (feeling /atomosphere) must
always be pronounced "じょう - jou."
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2016-04-22T00:48:10.787
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