What people find funny varies by culture and era, so humour must be taught

The argument

This argument starts from variation. A joke that reliably gets a laugh in one country can fall flat or give offence in another. Comedy from earlier generations often strikes later audiences as baffling rather than funny, and much of what a given audience finds hilarious depends on references, taboos and turns of phrase particular to that audience. If a sense of humour were simply issued at birth, proponents argue, we would expect it to point at roughly the same targets everywhere, as hunger and fear do. The variation runs deeper than subject matter. Cultures differ in the forms comedy takes, in how much irony or understatement is expected, in whether mockery of oneself or of authority is admired or condemned, and in the occasions on which laughter is permitted at all. These are conventions, and conventions are learned. A person raised inside one set of them acquires a sense of humour calibrated to it, which is why comedy travels so poorly and why living somewhere new can mean missing jokes for years before suddenly getting them. Proponents add that the learning is visible as it happens. Very young children laugh at surprise and physical incongruity; the appreciation of wordplay, irony and the deliberately deadpan arrives later, in step with the understanding each requires. A child must grasp that words have double meanings before a pun can land, and must be able to model another person's beliefs before dramatic irony can be funny. Humour therefore tracks the acquisition of knowledge and social understanding rather than preceding it. Because what counts as funny is set by conventions and references that a person must absorb, this argument concludes, a sense of humour is learned.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who hold humour to be innate reply that the argument confuses the material with the capacity. What varies between cultures is the content of jokes; what is universal is the disposition to be amused by incongruity and reversal, and that disposition must already be in place for any cultural material to be funny to anyone. They note that infants laugh within their first months, before language or any instruction in local convention, which is not possible if the capacity itself were taught.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Variation in what is found funny is consistent with a shared underlying capacity applied to different material, much as variation between languages is consistent with an inherited capacity for language. The premise needs the content and the capacity to be the same thing. [Rejecting P2] Conventions of form, target and occasion are indeed transmitted socially, and the opposing position does not dispute it. What is in question is the disposition to find anything funny at all, which this premise does not reach. [Rejecting P3] That appreciation of wordplay and irony waits on linguistic and social understanding shows that humour needs materials to work on, not that the capacity itself is acquired. Comprehension arriving on a developmental schedule is as consistent with maturation as with teaching.