diff --git a/font-latex.el b/font-latex.el
index 8fc567e2..92eb7046 100644
--- a/font-latex.el
+++ b/font-latex.el
@@ -1353,7 +1353,13 @@ triggers Font Lock to recognize the change."
 
   ;; Make sure fontification will be refreshed if a user sets variables
   ;; influencing fontification in her file-local variables section.
-  (add-hook 'hack-local-variables-hook #'font-latex-after-hacking-local-variables t t))
+  (add-hook 'hack-local-variables-hook #'font-latex-after-hacking-local-variables t t)
+
+  ;; We may be using the mode programmatically to extract data, and we
+  ;; then need this to be set up first so that a command like
+  ;; `xref-find-references' doesn't bug out when matching hits in
+  ;; files that Emacs isn't visiting.
+  (font-lock-set-defaults))
 
 (defun font-latex-update-font-lock (&optional _syntactic-kws)
   "Tell font-lock about updates of fontification rules.
diff --git a/latex.el b/latex.el
index 3abb00f2..a7f236e8 100644
--- a/latex.el
+++ b/latex.el
@@ -8068,6 +8068,7 @@ runs the hooks in `docTeX-mode-hook'."
         TeX-comment-start-regexp "\\(?:%\\(?:<[^>]+>\\)?\\)")
   (setq TeX-base-mode-name "docTeX")
   (TeX-set-mode-name)
+  (setq font-lock-set-defaults nil)
   (funcall TeX-install-font-lock))
 
 ;; Enable LaTeX abbrevs in docTeX mode buffer.