Techniques are disclosed for using phonetic features for speech recognition. For example, a method comprises the steps of 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.