the telling situation...

In any joke-telling situation--and the recitation of toasts are like joke-telling situations--a number of dynamics occur simultaneously: the individual listeners are responding in terms of their aesthetic to the manner of performance by the teller, but are also responding in terms of their own concerns (their fears or anxieties are being exercised or exorcised), and they must also respond to the social situation the telling engenders between them and the teller and between them and the other listeners.