A method, apparatus and computer program product for responding to an indirect utterance in a dialog between a user and a conversational system is described. An indirect utterance is received. A parse structure of the indirect utterance is generated. The indirect utterance is an utterance which does not match a user goal expressed as elements of a knowledge graph. The parse structure is connected through the knowledge graph to a user goal to issue a request which is not stated in the indirect utterance. A system response is performed, where the system response is a dialog system response based on a combination of the parse structure and the connected user goal.