Loan literati lively literary device (12)
I believe the answer is:
alliteration
'literary device' is the definition.
The answer and definition can be both related to communication as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?
'loan literati lively' is the wordplay.
'lively' is an anagram indicator (letters get livened up or moved around).
'loan'+'literati'='loanliterati'
'loanliterati' with letters rearranged gives 'ALLITERATION'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for alliteration that I've seen before include "Poetic rhyming device using words with the same initial letter" , "verse technique" , "Peter practised poetic ploy perfectly" , "Successive starts sounding similarly" , "Repeated first letters" .)