expressions, hand gestures, intonation, eye contact, body positioning, and body posture. Members of a society quickly understand nonverbal forms of communication common to their society, whereas outsiders may find the nonverbal communication difficult to comprehend. The use of the head nod is a good example to illustrate h Stratification in Atlantaow it varies across cultures. When listening to an American presentation a Japanese head nod only means continued attention whereas an American head nod means assent. So, disagreement at the end of the presentation would come as a surprise to an American businessman as he assumed that the Japanese businessman agreed throughout the whole presentation (LaFrance & Mayo, 1978). 3.1.3 – Language A third element that needs to be considered is language. Worldwide it has been estimated that there are up to 7,000 different languages spoken. However, 90% of these languages are spoken by less than 100,000 people (BBC, 2016). As there are so many different languages and international business people must be able to communicate, English has emerged as a lingua franca. A lingua franca refers to the communication in English between people with different first languages (Seidlhofer, 2005). Language also o Stratification in Atlanta rganizes the way people within a culture think about the world. This cultural accommodation proposes that individuals will respond in a manner that favours or accommodates the culture associated with the language of presentation. So, when bilingual people use their second language, they may develop a mind-set influenced by the values associated with the culture of that second language. Therefore, English as a lingua franca accommodates the mind-set of non-English companies to the English culture (Ralston et al., 1995). This has been shown by a study of Ha Stratification in AtlantaStratification in AtlantaStratification in Atlanta rzing  (2005). He found in his research that a language of a questionnaire influences the responses across countries. If the questionnaire was distributed in one common language (English), the responses were more homogenized than when the questionnaire was distributed in a country’s native language. Hence, in the English version the differences between the countries became less clear. As a result, management might incorrectly conclude that differences b>