Framing “goodness”: A cross-cultural collocational study of Korean chakhata and Russian dobryj

Abstract

This study compares the Korean adjective chakhata (“kind, good-natured”) and the Russian adjective dobryj (“kind, good”) using collocational and semantic network analyses. Drawing on large-scale web-crawled corpora from Sketch Engine, the study examines how the shared concept of “goodness” is structured in Korean and Russian discourse. The results show clear cross-linguistic differences in collocational distribution and semantic organization. Chakhata predominantly collocates with nouns in the [person] category and forms a tightly connected semantic network centered on normative evaluation. In contrast, dobryj appears across a broader range of conceptual domains, including [emotion], [communication], [cognition], and [quantity], and exhibits a more radial semantic structure extending into abstract evaluative meanings. These patterns point to different evaluative orientations. Chakhata tends to encode norm-based moral judgment focused on socially evaluated persons, whereas dobryj more often conveys affective warmth and communal orientation. Both adjectives also allow paradoxical or ironic uses, in which positive evaluation is contextually inverted by culturally specific expectations. The findings show that evaluative adjectives are organized into culturally specific semantic networks, through which shared notions of “goodness” are structured by distinct moral and affective frameworks in Korean and Russian discourse.