Here's an example of dumping the symbols from an object file (hello world in foo.c -> foo.o):

me@mine:~$ objdump -t foo.o

foo.o: file format elf32-i386

SYMBOL TABLE:
00000000 l df *ABS* 00000000 foo.c
00000000 l d .text 00000000 .text
00000000 l d .data 00000000 .data
00000000 l d .bss 00000000 .bss
00000000 l d .rodata 00000000 .rodata
00000000 l d .note.GNU-stack 00000000 .note.GNU-stack
00000000 l d .comment 00000000 .comment
00000000 g F .text 00000026 main
00000000 *UND* 00000000 puts