<p>This work is concerned with a viscoelastic equation with nonlinearities of variable exponents. Firstly, the global existence of solution is obtained. Then, a general decay result of the global solution is derived via the perturbed energy method and some formulas related to convex functions. The kernel function under consideration belongs to a wider class of functions. More precisely, it does not need to satisfy the condition related to differential inequalities involving itself; it just needs to stay below a certain known function. The results in this work expand and generalize those in the literature regarding problems with variable exponents.</p>