Abstract
This thesis explores how traditional Japanese rakugo comic storytelling is being utilised to convey scientific information, and what insights it might offer the field of science communication. It uses a grounded qualitative approach to analyse the texts of three professional "space rakugo" stories, taking cues from Gerard Genette's literary analysis framework and Frederic Bartlett's schema theory to discuss rakugo's distinctive features from a science communication angle. Findings reveal that including key information at important beats of the narrative could tap into story schema and the cognitive science of storytelling, thereby engendering recall. Using a well-known story, or one that follows a traditional cultural story format of the narratee, could further increase recall by accessing schema and aiding processing fluency and should be taken into account when targeting specific audiences. A literary analysis shows careful use of grammatical tenses to "distance" audiences from pseudo-scientific facts, subtly signalling whether information is scientific or created for narrative effect. This manipulation of distance between different parts of the story and the narratee holds promise for science communication purposes. Further discussion looks at the use of humour within science communication — or, as findings suggest, including "science within humour" rather than "humour within science", as it is better received by audiences. Suggestions on humour use include ways of integrating humour and scientific information to keep audience interest and techniques to avoid misinformation. The study suggests the importance of harnessing culturally relevant schema for science communication, and the need for further quantitative research within the field.