In the book Seeing like a state (1998), James Scott discusses how the modern state manages its population and territory by editing out ambiguity. According to Scott, the principal function of the state lies in its obsession to make space, and people inhabiting that space, legible:

In order to make people readable to itself, the state relies on categories to simplify otherwise complex human activities. It makes people the target of surveys, identifies the names and their family relations via the birth and marriage registration system, finds out the locations of their whereabouts, records them on maps where the space is readily readable, and corrects their otherwise ‘disorganised’ social behaviour through common legal and cultural practices (Scott, 1998).

Among others, Scott speculates, standardisation of language ‘may be the most powerful’ way for the state to govern space and ‘the precondition of many other simplifications’ (1998: 72). In the case of France, for example, replacement of local languages used in various provinces with one official language – French – was an essential part of the state-making process:

In other words, to establish a statist way of ‘seeing’ works in tandem with that of ‘speaking’. Space is organised through language that works as a cardinal classification unit to govern people who otherwise command different languages. The imposition of a common language enables the state to ‘read’ space and make it visible. Thus, the totalising impulse of the state lies in the domain of visibility and audibility.

For Étienne Balibar, to realise citizenship, in his case, European citizenship, beyond the statist totalising impulse is to create a new linguistic system called the ‘language of Europe’ (Balibar, 2004: 177–8).