ABSTRACT
Scripted works in mass media appear to be stable and reliable sources of linguistic evidence. The use of them requires some caution for at least some types of sociolinguistic inquiry. Some problems arise from the quality of reproduction, as in recordings of other scripted works, but others arise from the fact that different performances of the same song resulted in different texts. One’s linguistic experience of the scripted work depends on which performance of which script one has heard, unless we rely on an entirely prescriptive notion of an original script’s authority over a work’s performance and reception. Careful investigations of the variety of linguistic experience enabled by scripted works, whether controlled and accountable (quantitative) or relatively open and flexible (qualitative), must consider variations among scripts, texts, and performances of a given work. In the collection of data from scripted works, sociolinguistics converges with philology, which is a welcome development.
