1. A method for operating a virtual assistant on an electronic device, the method comprising: receiving a textual representation of user speech; identifying a candidate named entity from the textual representation of user speech, wherein the candidate named entity is associated with a saliency score; determining possible parts of speech of the candidate named entity; determining whether the possible parts of speech of the candidate named entity comprises one or more of a predetermined set of parts of speech; in response to determining that the possible parts of speech of the candidate named entity do not comprise one or more of the predetermined set of parts of speech, lowering the saliency score associated with the candidate named entity; and identifying a domain for processing the textual representation of user speech based at least in part on the saliency score associated with the candidate named entity.