The closest you can get is using bash commands like Python or AppleScriptObjC. There are two problems with parsing JSON. The first is that associative arrays/objects are not as dynamic interchangeable with AppleScript because records with user defined fields are not as easy to use as in JavaScript. You can’t create records on the fly for example without using cumbersome methods (store them in a file and print them using osascript). This is the real problem you’re facing in AppleScript and only AppleScriptObjC, faceless background apps like AppleScriptObjC runner made by Shane, 3rd party scripting additions and Bash are the only things I can think of that can help you manage those records. The second is performance, JSON is a perfect way to parse while reading (streaming) which makes it very useful even outside JavaScript because it’s faster to marshal and unmarshal than XML for example. AppleScript is not designed to do this, so even normal data could end up in slow code while a python command or AppleScriptObjC solution would parse and get the right data out of it in a blink of an eye.
Here an python example which can save you a lot time in AppleScript:
set JSONString to "[{
\"name\": \"AppleScript\",
\"type\": \"Scripting Language\",
\"see also\": [ \"Hypercard\"]
},
{
\"name\": \"JavaScript\",
\"type\": \"Prototype Based\",
\"see also\": [\"ECMAScript\", \"Python\"]
}
]"
do shell script "python -c 'import json,sys
obj=json.load(sys.stdin)
print obj[1][\"type\"]' <<<" & quoted form of JSONString