---
title: "Developing a Guideline for the — Watahiki 2026"
description: "Labov's structural model of oral narrative divides a story into clauses and assigns each a discourse function."
authors: ["Amane Watahiki", "Tomoki Doi", "Akari Kikuchi", "Hiroshi Ohata", "Yuki I. Nakata", "Takuya Niikawa", "Taiga Shinozaki", "Hitomi Yanaka"]
year: 2026
venue: "Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference"
source: "https://aclanthology.org/2026.lrec-1.138/"
doi: "10.63317/3bfu9oz7fze4"
licence: "CC BY-NC 4.0 (ELRA, LREC proceedings)"
licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/"
summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License"
canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/watahiki-2026-developing-guideline-labovian-structural-analysis/"
---
[Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/watahiki-2026-developing-guideline-labovian-structural-analysis/)

[home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/3/) / Developing a Guideline for the Labovian-Structural Analysis of Oral Narratives in Japanese

# Developing a Guideline for the Labovian-Structural Analysis of Oral Narratives in Japanese

**Authors:** Amane Watahiki, Tomoki Doi, Akari Kikuchi, Hiroshi Ohata, Yuki I. Nakata, Takuya Niikawa, Taiga Shinozaki, [Hitomi Yanaka](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/authors/hitomi-yanaka/) · **Year:** 2026 · **Venue:** Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC 4.0 (ELRA, LREC proceedings)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)

**Links:** [Publisher's page](https://aclanthology.org/2026.lrec-1.138/) · [PDF](https://aclanthology.org/2026.lrec-1.138.pdf) · [DOI 10.63317/3bfu9oz7fze4](https://doi.org/10.63317/3bfu9oz7fze4) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W7160075220)

**Citations:** 0 citations (openalex-snapshot · 2026-10-14)

## Summary
Labov's structural model of oral narrative divides a story into clauses and assigns each a discourse function. Applying it by hand is slow and requires repeated interpretation of the whole transcript, and every existing Labov-annotated resource covers English, whose grammar and discourse habits differ sharply from Japanese. The authors address this with the first systematic, reproducible guideline for Labovian annotation of Japanese oral data. Their scheme keeps all six macro-level functions rather than merging them into three. It also adds micro-level clause types, provides Japanese-specific rules for clause segmentation and, following Riessman, extends coverage to habitual and hypothetical narratives as well as stories. Three annotators tested the guideline on a pilot set of interviews with family carers of people with dementia. They agreed strongly on segmentation and moderately on the two classification tasks. The macro-level score was marginally higher than in earlier work, even though the labels were finer-grained. The guideline is publicly released and lays groundwork for larger shareable Japanese datasets and for future semi-automated structural analysis in qualitative research.

## Key points
- Agreement among three annotators reached Fleiss' κ = 0.80 for clause segmentation. Micro- and macro-level classification scored about 0.41 and 0.45. The abstract reports these as Krippendorff's α, while the introduction gives Fleiss's κ = 0.40 and 0.45.
- The annotation layers are:
  - clause segmentation;
  - narrative span boundaries;
  - narrative type (Story, Habitual, Hypothetical);
  - micro labels (Narrative, Restricted, Free);
  - macro labels (Abstract, Orientation, Complication, Evaluation, Resolution, Coda).
- Prior English resources have specific gaps:
  - Saldías and Roy (2020) released guidelines built on 594 spoken narratives and over 10,000 clauses, but used only three categories and no micro labels.
  - Wasserscheidt et al. (2021), like Ouyang and McKeown (2014), retain six categories, yet neither provides a fixed guideline.
- For Japanese, earlier work was limited to suggestions by Kodama (2000), with no annotated dataset produced since.
- The guidelines are hosted at github.com/ynklab/Labov-guideline.git, and the paper appears in LREC 2026, pages 1750–1760.

*Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.*

Fields: [Linguistics & languages](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/linguistics/)

## Cite

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work.

```bibtex
@inproceedings{watahiki2026developing,
  title = {{Developing a Guideline for the Labovian-Structural Analysis of Oral Narratives in Japanese}},
  author = {Watahiki, Amane and Doi, Tomoki and Kikuchi, Akari and Ohata, Hiroshi and Nakata, Yuki I. and Niikawa, Takuya and Shinozaki, Taiga and Yanaka, Hitomi},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the Fifteenth Language Resources and Evaluation Conference},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.63317/3bfu9oz7fze4},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.63317/3bfu9oz7fze4}
}
```

- [← previous Determinants of Hesitations and Repetitions in Hindi Spontaneous Speech](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/sharma-2026-determinants-hesitations-repetitions-hindi-spontaneous/)
- [next → Developing A Hawaiian Corpus Toolkit for Data-Driven Language Learning](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/winkie-2026-developing-hawaiian-corpus-toolkit-data/)
- [↑ back to papers of 2026](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2026/page/3/)

## References

28 references, 3 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

1. Tomoki Doi and Hitomi Yanaka. 2024. Shizen gengo shori o mochiita naratibu bunseki no kanousei [possibilities of narrative analysis using natural language processing]. Journal of the Japanese Society for Artificial Intelligence, 39(5):608–614. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Tomoki+Doi+and+Hitomi+Yanaka%2E+2024%2E+Shizen+gengo+shori+o+mochiita+naratibu+bunseki+no+kanousei+%5Bpossibilities+of+narrative+analysis+using+natural+language+processing%5D%2E+Journal+of+the+Japanese+Society+)
2. Suzanne Fleischman. 1990. Tense and Narrativity. Routledge, London. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Suzanne+Fleischman%2E+1990%2E+Tense+and+Narrativity%2E+Routledge%2C+London%2E)
3. Chris Fournier. 2013a. Evaluating text segmentation using boundary edit distance. In Proceedings of the 51st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers), pages 1702–1712, Sofia, Bulgaria. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Chris+Fournier%2E+2013a%2E+Evaluating+text+segmentation+using+boundary+edit+distance%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+51st+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics+%28Volume+1%3A+Long+Papers%29%2C+pa)
4. Chris Fournier and Diana Inkpen. 2012. Segmentation similarity and agreement. In Proceedings of the 2012 Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL-HLT 2012), pages 152–161, Montréal, Canada. Association for Computati… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Chris+Fournier+and+Diana+Inkpen%2E+2012%2E+Segmentation+similarity+and+agreement%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+2012+Conference+of+the+North+American+Chapter+of+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics%3A+Huma)
5. Christopher Fournier. 2013b. Evaluating Text Segmentation. Ph.D. thesis, Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Christopher+Fournier%2E+2013b%2E+Evaluating+Text+Segmentation%2E+Ph%2ED%2E+thesis%2C+Universit%C3%A9+d%E2%80%99Ottawa+%2F+University+of+Ottawa%2E)
6. Andrew S. Gordon and Ron Swanson. 2009. Identifying personal stories in millions of weblog posts. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), pages pages unavailable. Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Andrew+S%2E+Gordon+and+Ron+Swanson%2E+2009%2E+Identifying+personal+stories+in+millions+of+weblog+posts%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+International+Conference+on+Weblogs+and+Social+Media+%28ICWSM%29%2C+pages+pages+unavai)
7. Yudai Kishimoto, Shinnosuke Sawada, Yugo Murawaki, Daisuke Kawahara, and Sadao Kurohashi. 2018. Improving crowdsourcing-based annotation of Japanese discourse relations. In Proceedings of the Eleventh International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2018), Miyazaki, Japan. Europea… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Yudai+Kishimoto%2C+Shinnosuke+Sawada%2C+Yugo+Murawaki%2C+Daisuke+Kawahara%2C+and+Sadao+Kurohashi%2E+2018%2E+Improving+crowdsourcing%2Dbased+annotation+of+Japanese+discourse+relations%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+Eleventh) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/kishimoto-2018-improving-crowdsourcing-based-annotation-japanese/)
8. Yasue Kodama. 2000. [Possibilities and issues in analyzing Japanese narratives using the Labovian model] Rabobian moderu ni yoru Nihongo no naratibu bunseki no kanōsei to shomondai (in Japanese). Nihongo Kokusai Sentā Kiyō, 10:17– 32. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Yasue+Kodama%2E+2000%2E+%5BPossibilities+and+issues+in+analyzing+Japanese+narratives+using+the+Labovian+model%5D+Rabobian+moderu+ni+yoru+Nihongo+no+naratibu+bunseki+no+kano%CC%84sei+to+shomondai+%28in+Japanese%29%2E+Nih)
9. Ai Kubota, Takuma Sato, Takayuki Amamoto, Ryota Akiyoshi, and Koji Mineshima. 2024. Annotation of Japanese discourse relations focusing on concessive inferences. In Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 202… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Ai+Kubota%2C+Takuma+Sato%2C+Takayuki+Amamoto%2C+Ryota+Akiyoshi%2C+and+Koji+Mineshima%2E+2024%2E+Annotation+of+Japanese+discourse+relations+focusing+on+concessive+inferences%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+2024+Joint+Inter)
10. William Labov. 2013. The Language of Life and Death: The Transformation of Experience in Oral Narrative. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=William+Labov%2E+2013%2E+The+Language+of+Life+and+Death%3A+The+Transformation+of+Experience+in+Oral+Narrative%2E+Cambridge+University+Press%2C+Cambridge%2C+England%2E)
11. William Labov and Joshua Waletzky. 1967. Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm, editor, Essays on the Verbal and Visual Arts, pages 3–38. University of Washington Press, Seattle and London. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=William+Labov+and+Joshua+Waletzky%2E+1967%2E+Narrative+analysis%3A+Oral+versions+of+personal+experience%2E+In+J%2E+Helm%2C+editor%2C+Essays+on+the+Verbal+and+Visual+Arts%2C+pages+3%E2%80%9338%2E+University+of+Washington+Press%2C)
12. Alex Lascarides and Nicholas Asher. 2007. Segmentation and Interpretation in Discourse Representation Theory. Cambridge University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Alex+Lascarides+and+Nicholas+Asher%2E+2007%2E+Segmentation+and+Interpretation+in+Discourse+Representation+Theory%2E+Cambridge+University+Press%2E)
13. Effi Levi, Guy Mor, Tamir Sheafer, and Shaul R. Shenhav. 2022. Detecting narrative elements in informational text. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: NAACL 2022, pages 1755–1765, Seattle, United States. Association for Computational Linguistics. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Effi+Levi%2C+Guy+Mor%2C+Tamir+Sheafer%2C+and+Shaul+R%2E+Shenhav%2E+2022%2E+Detecting+narrative+elements+in+informational+text%2E+In+Findings+of+the+Association+for+Computational+Linguistics%3A+NAACL+2022%2C+pages+1755%E2%80%93)
14. William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson. 1988. Rhetorical structure theory: Toward a functional theory of text organization. Text, 8(3):243–281. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=William+C%2E+Mann+and+Sandra+A%2E+Thompson%2E+1988%2E+Rhetorical+structure+theory%3A+Toward+a+functional+theory+of+text+organization%2E+Text%2C+8%283%29%3A243%E2%80%93281%2E) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/enud-1988-mann-rhetorical-structure-theory-functional/)
15. Judith N Mildner and Diana I Tamir. 2024. Why do we think? the dynamics of spontaneous thought reveal its functions. PNAS Nexus, 3(6):pgae230. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Judith+N+Mildner+and+Diana+I+Tamir%2E+2024%2E+Why+do+we+think%3F+the+dynamics+of+spontaneous+thought+reveal+its+functions%2E+PNAS+Nexus%2C+3%286%29%3Apgae230%2E)
16. Stephanie Nelson and Barry Spence. 2020. Narrative time. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Stephanie+Nelson+and+Barry+Spence%2E+2020%2E+Narrative+time%2E)
17. Jessica Ouyang and Kathy McKeown. 2014. Towards automatic detection of narrative structure. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC’14), pages 4624–4631, Reykjavik, Iceland. European Language Resources Association (ELRA). [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Jessica+Ouyang+and+Kathy+McKeown%2E+2014%2E+Towards+automatic+detection+of+narrative+structure%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+Ninth+International+Conference+on+Language+Resources+and+Evaluation+%28LREC%E2%80%9914%29%2C+pages+4)
18. R Prasad, N Dinesh, Alan Lee, E Miltsakaki, Livio Robaldo, A Joshi, and B Webber. 2008. The penn discourse TreeBank 2.0. LREC, pages 2961–2968. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=R+Prasad%2C+N+Dinesh%2C+Alan+Lee%2C+E+Miltsakaki%2C+Livio+Robaldo%2C+A+Joshi%2C+and+B+Webber%2E+2008%2E+The+penn+discourse+TreeBank+2%2E0%2E+LREC%2C+pages+2961%E2%80%932968%2E) [our card](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/disc-2008-prasad-penn-discourse-treebank-2-0/)
19. James Pustejovsky and Amber Stubbs. 2012. Natural language annotation for machine learning. O’Reilly Media, Inc. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=James+Pustejovsky+and+Amber+Stubbs%2E+2012%2E+Natural+language+annotation+for+machine+learning%2E+O%E2%80%99Reilly+Media%2C+Inc%2E)
20. Elahe Rahimtoroghi, Thomas Corcoran, Reid Swanson, Marilyn A Walker, Kenji Sagae, and Andrew Gordon. 2014. Minimal narrative annotation schemes and their applications. In Seventh Intelligent Narrative Technologies Workshop. AAAI Publications. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Elahe+Rahimtoroghi%2C+Thomas+Corcoran%2C+Reid+Swanson%2C+Marilyn+A+Walker%2C+Kenji+Sagae%2C+and+Andrew+Gordon%2E+2014%2E+Minimal+narrative+annotation+schemes+and+their+applications%2E+In+Seventh+Intelligent+Narrative)
21. H. Reichenbach. 1947. Elements of Symbolic Logic. A Free Press paperback : philosophy. Macmillan Company. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=H%2E+Reichenbach%2E+1947%2E+Elements+of+Symbolic+Logic%2E+A+Free+Press+paperback+%3A+philosophy%2E+Macmillan+Company%2E)
22. Catherine Kohler Riessman. 1989. Life events, meaning and narrative: the case of infidelity and divorce. Social Science & Medicine, 29(6):743– 751. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Catherine+Kohler+Riessman%2E+1989%2E+Life+events%2C+meaning+and+narrative%3A+the+case+of+infidelity+and+divorce%2E+Social+Science+%26+Medicine%2C+29%286%29%3A743%E2%80%93+751%2E)
23. Catherine Kohler Riessman. 1990. Strategic uses of narrative in the presentation of self and illness: a research note. Social Science & Medicine, 30(11):1195–1200. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Catherine+Kohler+Riessman%2E+1990%2E+Strategic+uses+of+narrative+in+the+presentation+of+self+and+illness%3A+a+research+note%2E+Social+Science+%26+Medicine%2C+30%2811%29%3A1195%E2%80%931200%2E)
24. Catherine Kohler Riessman. 2008. Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. SAGE Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Catherine+Kohler+Riessman%2E+2008%2E+Narrative+Methods+for+the+Human+Sciences%2E+SAGE+Publications%2C+Thousand+Oaks%2C+CA%2E)
25. Belén Saldías and Deb Roy. 2020. Exploring aspects of similarity between spoken personal narratives by disentangling them into narrative clause types. In Proceedings of the First Joint Workshop on Narrative Understanding, Storylines, and Events, pages 78–86, Online. Association for Computational Lin… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Bel%C3%A9n+Sald%C3%ADas+and+Deb+Roy%2E+2020%2E+Exploring+aspects+of+similarity+between+spoken+personal+narratives+by+disentangling+them+into+narrative+clause+types%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+First+Joint+Workshop+on+Nar)
26. Reid Swanson, Elahe Rahimtoroghi, Thomas Corcoran, and Marilyn Walker. 2014. Identifying narrative clause types in personal stories. In Proceedings of the 15th Annual Meeting of the Special Interest Group on Discourse and Dialogue (SIGDIAL), pages 171–180, Philadelphia, PA, U.S.A. Association for Co… [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Reid+Swanson%2C+Elahe+Rahimtoroghi%2C+Thomas+Corcoran%2C+and+Marilyn+Walker%2E+2014%2E+Identifying+narrative+clause+types+in+personal+stories%2E+In+Proceedings+of+the+15th+Annual+Meeting+of+the+Special+Interest+G)
27. Philipp Wasserscheidt, Marija Mandić, Nadine Voll-städt, Ana Jovanović, Ivana Tanasijević, Ivana Vučina Simić, Uliana Yazhinova, and Anđelka Zečević. 2021. Corpus-based analysis of spoken narratives. introducing a corpus and a search tool. Govor/Speech, 37(2):149–178. 10. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Philipp+Wasserscheidt%2C+Marija+Mandi%C4%87%2C+Nadine+Voll%2Dst%C3%A4dt%2C+Ana+Jovanovi%C4%87%2C+Ivana+Tanasijevi%C4%87%2C+Ivana+Vu%C4%8Dina+Simi%C4%87%2C+Uliana+Yazhinova%2C+and+An%C4%91elka+Ze%C4%8Devi%C4%87%2E+2021%2E+Corpus%2Dbased+analysis+of+spoken+narratives%2E+)
28. Language Resource References Saldías and Roy. 2020. RTN: Personal Narrative Dataset (Saldías & Roy). MIT-CCC. MIT-CCC / ACL-NUSE Personal Narratives project, distributed via GitHub. PID [https://github.com/mit-ccc/acl-nuse-personal-narratives/blob/master/data/Saldias%26Roy-RTN_data.csv](https://github.com/mit-ccc/acl-nuse-personal-narratives/blob/master/data/Saldias%26Roy-RTN_data.csv). [↗](https://github.com/mit-ccc/acl-nuse-personal-narratives/blob/master/data/Saldias%26Roy-RTN_data.csv)