CHAPTER 9:

Can people who are deaf from birth appreciate jokes and puns that involve homonyms?

Jokes that rely on  homonyms are pretty much incomprehensible to many born-deaf people. A child born deaf grows up without that unconscious absorption of spoken English. This makes deaf children not understand these jokes because they have never heard them in context so to speak. Deaf children often start school with no real language at all which leaves their English vocabulary to be quite llimited. "Most congenitally deaf people cant be expected to understand the whimsical aspects of English wordplay, much less enjoy it." Much of English humor is "oral-based" and not accessible for deaf people.
Deaf humor is visually based. Although hearing people may find some of deaf humor entertaining, it is most of the time incomprehensible to hearing people. Having a deaf background in ASL will help people appreciate deaf humor.