Exposition, a term borrowed from fiction and entertainment, means providing background information needed to follow what’s going on. Normally it’s things like character and action and plot, but for humor it’s the information needed to grasp one or both of the kernel’s elements.

Hosted variety shows like the Tonight Show made popular a specific kind of stand-up known as the monologue. A monologue features topical humor, in which the subject matter is a currently popular issue or event. Because audience members may not be equally familiar with a given current event, it’s helpful to provide a brief summary of the topic as a lead up to the joke itself.

For many examples of humor, exposition is implicit as it relies on widely shared general knowledge.

If exposition is not present when needed, the humor is what’s known as an inside joke. A hand lotion with the brand name Glee is not overtly humorous. Observers need to call to mind an unmentioned but well-known hand-rubbing method to get the humor. Those that can do this are on the inside.

A final illustrative example:

Player One: Knock, knock
Player Two: Who's there?
Player One: Sam and Janet
Player Two: Sam and Janet who?
Player One: Sam and Janet evening

The first two lines are powerful disposition cues that humor is present. However observers may still not detect humor if they lack background knowledge. This is so even if an additional disposition and exposition hint is provided by Player One singing the final line as a melody. For those still on the outside, the sense reference is a song from the 1949 musical South Pacific entitled Some Enchanted Evening. For those who know the song and find the joke funny, the detected nonsense is ATYPICAL. For those who don’t know it but still find the last line humorous, the detected nonsense leans more towards SURREAL.

Return to Context

Return to the first Humor Context component Disposition

Continue to the third Humor Context component Setup