Never have I met an ESFP who have been so fascinated with language as Carlin was.. I think he was an ENTP. Not just because of the interest in language but for many other reasons as well.
That's all well and good, because I changed my mind. I was right in the first place: He's ENTJ as all hell.
On his love of language: His focus on language, in his act, is never to analyze language. He doesn't pick it apart. Rathher, he criticizes overuse, or misuse, of it. The language portions of his act, like everything else about it, are snarky Te + Se rants. Like this (one of his best acts ever, in my opinion) for example:
[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DagVklB4VHQ"]Air Marshal Carlin tells you to go fuck yourself - Part 1[/YOUTUBE]
[YOUTUBE="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DagVklB4VHQ"]Air Marshal Carlin tells you to go fuck yourself - Part 2[/YOUTUBE]
That's another complaint of mine - too much use of this prefix "pre". It's all over the language now — "pre"-this, "pre"-that, place the turkey in a "pre-heated" oven. It's ridiculous! There are only two states an oven can possibly exist in: Heated or unheated! "Pre-heated" is a meaningless fucking term! It's like "pre-recorded" — "This program was pre-recorded." Well, of course it was pre-recorded! When else are you gonna record it, afterwards? That's the whole purpose of recording; to do it beforehand! Otherwise it doesn't really work, does it? "Pre-existing", "pre-planning", "pre-screening" — you know what I tell these people? Pre-suck my genital situation! And they seem to understand what I'm talking about.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is what Te humor looks like (with a bit of Se at the end there -- the whole "suck my genitals" bit).
And then of course there's the fact he uses, quite deliberately it seems, body language, voice tone, etc. to enhance his act. Reading his book it's just not anywhere near as funny to read his stand-up act as it is to see it. This is Se.
And then there's the fact his Ni is, in fact, one of his top two functions. Reading his autobiography, he has actually always been a very long-term planner. When he was eleven he was already trying to figure out what he wanted to do in life, and by the time he got out of the air force he already had a plan completely ironed out. A plan that he faithfully stuck to until moving from stage two (becoming famous as a stand-up comic) to stage three (making it as a comic actor) failed because he discovered that he sucked at acting. Then it took him ages to pick a new path (something common among Ni users -- they have to kind of "reboot" when their schemes don't pan out), but when he finally had it ironed out his confidence was fully restored.
That, and the whole story is peppered with moments of strange, inexplicable "knowing" very consonant with Ni -- such as when he just
knew him and Jack Burns were gonna be separated.