  We study coupled dynamics on networks using symbolic dynamics. The symbolic
dynamics is defined by dividing the state space into a small number of regions
(typically 2), and considering the relative frequencies of the transitions
between those regions. It turns out that the global qualitative properties of
the coupled dynamics can be classified into three different phases based on the
synchronization of the variables and the homogeneity of the symbolic dynamics.
Of particular interest is the {\it homogeneous unsynchronized phase} where the
coupled dynamics is in a chaotic unsynchronized state, but exhibits (almost)
identical symbolic dynamics at all the nodes in the network. We refer to this
dynamical behaviour as {\it symbolic synchronization}. In this phase, the local
symbolic dynamics of any arbitrarily selected node reflects global properties
of the coupled dynamics, such as qualitative behaviour of the largest Lyapunov
exponent and phase synchronization. This phase depends mainly on the network
architecture, and only to a smaller extent on the local chaotic dynamical
function. We present results for two model dynamics, iterations of the
one-dimensional logistic map and the two-dimensional H\'enon map, as local
dynamical function.
