Systems, methods, and computer-readable storage devices are for identifying a user profile for speech recognition. The user profile is selected from one of several user profiles which are all associated with a speaker, and can be selected based on the identity of the speaker, the location of the speaker, the device the speaker is using, or other relevant parameters. Such parameters can be hierarchical, having multiple layers, and can also be dependent or independent from one another. Using the parameters identified, the user profile is selected and used to recognize speech.