The present analysis interrogates the ways that American educators and bureaucrats at the turn of the twentieth century conceptualised the project of nationalism and modernity in the newly annexed nation of the Philippines through the trope of 'linguistic unification'. These robust ideologies of language arose from the perception that national progress and democracy were centrally achievable through a shared linguistic code, arising from Enlightenment concepts of nationhood imported from Europe and subsequently figured in the uniquely American framework of exceptionalism, expansionism, and economic logics framed in the political and religious concept of 'benevolent assimilation'. Focusing attention on a series of documents written by American teachers and administrators during the transitional time of the Insular Government from 1900 to 1916, the details of the ideological foundations of the role of English in the Philippines is explored.