Nasty cleric involved in spurious type of reasoning (7,6)
I believe the answer is:
vicious circle
'type of reasoning' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both related to communication as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe there's an association between them I don't understand?
'nasty cleric involved in spurious' is the wordplay.
I cannot really see how this works, but
'nasty' could be 'vicious' (I've seen this before) and 'vicious' is found within the answer.
an anagram of 'cleric' is 'circle' which is located in the answer.
This accounts for all the letters.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for vicious circle that I've seen before include "Situation always leading you back to the drawing board" , "Endlessly worsening situation" , "Where moves to solve a problem just make things worse" , "keeps getting worse?" , "Sequence of reinforcing events" .)