1. A method, comprising: obtaining a first dictionary and a training data set associated with a speech recognition system; computing one or more support parameters from the training data set; transforming the first dictionary into a second dictionary, wherein the second dictionary is a function of one or more phonetic labels of the first dictionary; and using the one or more support parameters to select one or more samples from the second dictionary to create a set of one or more exemplar-based class identification features for a pattern recognition task.