The role of claims to non-serious intent regarding (apparently) amusing forms of teasing amid speakers of English are examined to expand our comprehension of this deontological explanation of intent. Using an analysis of the action-sequential environments in which claims to non-serious intent are made, a distinction is first made between two distinct teasing practices, jocular mockery and jocular pretence. These practices are disclosed as separate via the design of the tease itself (i.e. whether it is delivered as non-serious or serious), the sequential placement of recipient laughter (i.e. whether it is bordering the tease or postponed), and what next action is made contingently pertinent by a claim to non-serious intent (i.e. a return to solemn talk or laughter). It is then asserted that claims to non-serious intent are not only sequentially implicative, but morally implicative as well, as such claims revolve around the extent to which producers may be lawfully held liable for the possibly earnest implications of the tease in question, and the extent to which recipients are permitted to take offence. The moral work linked to claims to non-serious intent covers pre-empting or barring the taking of offence in response to the tease, admitting a possible indecency, disciplining a recipient for taking things too gravely, and challenging the pertinence of the claim to non-serious intent itself. It is concluded that requiring non-serious intent is sequentially and morally implicative, and so shapes a situated social action in and of itself, and that an analysis of the interpersonal implications of teasing, including the interactional accomplishment of interpersonal evaluations, participant identities and relationships, demands careful attention to be suitably directed. The implications of this first order, discursive account of intent for technical, second accounts of cognition-for-interaction are also briefly considered.