In many parts of Asia, smiling does not mean being happy, amused or friendly. Some Indonesians cannot utter a complete sentence without a burst of giggles, regardless of the topic. When I first lived abroad, I worked very hard to learn not to smile ‘too much’, so not to risk offending people.
Heryanto, Ariel (2015) “Asia literacy: A deeply problematic metaphor”, in C. Johnson, V. Mackie and T. Morris-Suzuki (eds), The Social Sciences in The Asian Century, Canberra: ANU Press, pp. 171-189.
keywords: digital technology, Euro-American centricism, literacy, new media, privacy, orality, smile
Ariel Heryanto 