1. A method for determining intent associated with a spoken utterance of a user, comprising the steps of: obtaining decoded speech uttered by the user; and extracting an intent from the decoded speech uttered by the user, wherein the intent is extracted in an iterative manner such that a first class is determined after a first iteration and at least one sub-class of the first class is determined after at least a second iteration, the first class and the at least one sub-class of the first class being hierarchically indicative of the intent of the user.