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In symbols, there are both sensory substances and spiritual meanings, which are unified and inseparable. For example, traffic lights at intersections are not intended to illuminate people, but represent a traffic rule. The connection between this symbol and the reflected object is realized through meaning. Symbols are always meaningful symbols, and meaning is always expressed in a certain symbolic form. The construction function of symbols is to establish a connection between perceptual symbols and their meanings, and present this connection in our consciousness.

Symbol is one of the basic concepts of semiotics. Symbols generally refer to words, languages, codes, mathematical symbols, chemical symbols, traffic signs, etc. However, the scope of symbols in semiotics is much wider. In social life, greetings, rituals, games, literature, art, myths and other elements are symbols. In short, anything that can be used as a symbol of something can be called a symbol. Symbols accompany various human activities, and human society and culture can be formed by symbols.

Among all kinds of symbol systems, language is the most important and complicated symbol system. Saussure, a linguist, believes that symbols include two inseparable components, namely, signifier (that is, a set of pronunciations of a language or a set of printing and writing marks) and signified (that is, a concept or concept as a symbolic meaning). However, the symbols of words are "arbitrary", and there is no fixed natural connection between the signifier and the signified of words except onomatopoeia. Cassirer, a symbolic aesthetician, thinks that "art can be defined as a symbolic language", which is the formal symbolic language of our thoughts and feelings. Every artistic image can be said to be a symbol or symbol system with a specific meaning. In order to understand artistic works, we must understand artistic images; To understand the artistic image, we must understand that, in Cahill's view, symbols, as the reference form of objects, have the functions of generating human nature and shaping human culture.