He gets only one oar out for a bit of sculling! (5)
I believe the answer is:
oscar
'he' 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?
'only one oar out for a bit of sculling' is the wordplay.
'only one oar out' becomes 'car' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'for' says to put letters next to each other (I've seen this in other clues).
'a bit' indicates taking the first letters (I've seen 'a bit of' mean this).
The first letters of 'of sculling' is 'os'.
'car' after 'os' is 'OSCAR'.
'gets' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for oscar that I've seen before include "Film prize" , "Comms code for "O"" , "Movie award, popularly called" , "Develop again" , "Wildean film award?" .)