There has been a feeling as long as I can remember that different nationalities have their own brand of humour. I vividly remember going, in my gap year, to see Terminator 2 in German, after having just seen it in English, and noticing that many of the jokes had been changed when it was dubbed into German. The most popular television programme while I was there was Mr Bean (no dubbing required - even though it is British, it is just slapstick and far more popular in Germany than Britain), which I couldn't stand, despite a love for Rowan Atkinson born out of Blackadder. I felt that the sense of humour was different there but perhaps only because I had been told so. Like Tannen's 'difference' theory, it seems to ring true because we notice what has been pointed out to us and fail to notice what doesn't fit - like noticing a word you don't think you have heard for ages and then hearing it everywhere - it doesn't mean it wasn't there before; our perceptions are very subjective and we filter out anything that doesn'seem pertinent from the deluge of information around us.
Izzard says in this article that there are bound to be different senses of humour but that they don't match linguistic borders and that seems to make perfect sense. Perhaps I can lose one of my long-standing prejudices now it occurs to me to look for information to the contrary.
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